Sharks, sea turtles, corals, wolffish — the 1,200 kilometre Laurentian Channel off the southwest coast of Newfoundland is home to tremendous biodiversity.

And that’s the reason it’s set to become Canada’s newest Marine Protected Area, a designation designed to conserve and protect vulnerable species and ecosystems.

There’s just one catch: draft regulations for the proposed 11,619 square-kilometre protected area allow oil and gas exploration and drilling for much of the year. In addition, the government has reduced the size of the protected area by more than one-third from what was originally planned.

Documents obtained by The Narwhal paint a picture of a disturbingly close relationship between the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) and provides clues of how a “marine protected area” ended up allowing offshore oil drilling.

Canada is in a hurry to classify more marine areas as “protected” to meet an international target to protect 10 per cent of its oceans by  2020. Whether an area that allows offshore drilling will even qualify as protected is the subject of heated international debate.

ICYMI: Is Canada Fudging the Numbers on its Marine Protection Progress?

But “high confidence estimates” of up to 257 million barrels of oil and four trillion cubic feet of natural gas put the Laurentian Channel in the crosshairs of conservation and resource extraction.

The documents — obtained by The Narwhal via access to information legislation — reveal that lobbying meetings took place between government and industry without being recorded properly in the federal registry and that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans provided the oil industry lobby group with an advance copy of a presentation.

CAPP received advanced copy of DFO presentation

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans conducted more than 30 consultations since mid-2014, when a proposed regulatory framework for the the Laurentian Channel was first distributed.

Stakeholders included the fishing industry, oil and gas players, the Shipping Federation of Canada, environmental organizations, academics, Indigenous groups and various governments. The last consultation of this kind occured on October 28, 2016, with the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Committee on Oceans Management.

CAPP is listed as only having two consultations with DFO as part of this process: once on May 19, 2016, and another on Oct. 20, 2016.

But on the morning of the second meeting, Stephen Snow — DFO’s manager of oceans for Newfoundland and Labrador — sent an intriguing e-mail to Jennifer Matthews, a policy analyst at CAPP.

Both parties indicated that a call occured on Oct. 19 between Snow and CAPP, with the DFO manager beginning his Oct. 20 e-mail as “a follow-up from our discussion yesterday.” Then, Snow explained that he was attaching a draft presentation about marine conservation targets that he would be presenting that afternoon.

“As we have now concluded consultations with all stakeholders, we have not been giving out the presentation as it contains sensitive information from a DFO perspective that needs to be accompanied with the ‘Presenter,’ ” Snow wrote.  Following that, he specifically requested that CAPP “not share or distribute the power point and delete it as we agreed.”

Excerpt from documents released to The Narwhal via Freedom of Information Legislation. The e-mail exchange shows Stephen Snow, DFO’s manager of oceans for Newfoundland and Labrador, requesting CAPP review, then delete, a presentation regarding marine conservation targets.

This communication raises some big questions, according to Gretchen Fitzgerald,  director of Sierra Club Canada’s Atlantic region chapter.

“It seems like there’s some advanced notice and even some discussions that are happening alluded to in the e-mail that would make you think there’s a little bit too much collaboration going on,” Fitzgerald told The Narwhal.

“It’s just worrying when you see people getting documents in advance of what’s supposed to be a public multi-stakeholder consultation, and being given more opportunity to prepare and an inside-track on these consultations that are supposed to put everybody on an equal footing.”

Stella Ruddock, communications officer for DFO, said in an interview with The Narhwhal that the presentation was sent out early as CAPP had employees in Halifax as well as on the ground in Newfoundland, where the meeting was held, and that it was an attempt to “try to speed up the process of getting the meeting going on time.”

She said that DFO requested that CAPP not share the presentation as “there were maps in the presentation that DFO felt might be misconstrued, I guess, if they weren’t accompanied by the presenter. They felt that if it got out, if it was circulated without the presenter, it might be misunderstood.”

Ruddock couldn’t comment on which specific maps were considered sensitive, or if it’s standard practice for DFO to send out a draft presentation to stakeholders prior to a consultation.

10 CAPP members meet with DFO days after draft regs published

On June 27, 2017 — only three days after the draft regulations for the marine protected area were published in the Canada Gazette — CAPP and at least six other industry heavyweights met with DFO for 45 minutes.

That list included senior representatives from BP, Shell Canada, ExxonMobil, Nexen, Suncor and Statoil. However, e-mails from both CAPP and DFO made reference to “10 CAPP members,” suggesting more may have been present in the room.

Only CAPP and ExxonMobil actually registered the communication in the federal lobbying registry.

ICYMI: BP Wants to Drill Underwater Wells Twice the Depth of Deepwater Horizon in Canada

All companies should have registered the meeting, regardless of it being organized by CAPP, said Duff Conacher, founder of Democracy Watch.

“My opinion is that the companies violated the Lobbying Act by failing to register the meeting in the monthly communications registry,” Conacher said.

BP wasn’t even registered to lobby the federal government (and hadn’t been since 2014).

DFO wanted voluntary commitment not to drill in conservation area

A scenario note prepared for DFO’s senior assistant deputy minister of ecosystems and fisheries management Kevin Stringer noted that CAPP members “will likely raise questions on the intention of the government to prohibit or limit current or future oil and gas activities in MPAs in general, but more specifically in the proposed Laurentian Channel Oceans Act MPA.”

It also noted that DFO’s main objective for the meeting was to ascertain if CAPP would be willing to “demonstrate its marine stewardship commitment” by supporting a statement that “no calls for bid on leases in the Laurentian Channel will ever be issued in support of the long-term conservation of the area.”

It appears DFO did not meet that goal.

A summary of the meeting e-mailed out on July 10, 2017, stated that “there was some discussion about Laurentian Channel but not in detail or in any conclusive way; there was agreement to have an ongoing dialogue.”

Fitzgerald of Sierra Club said in an interview with The Narwhal that it was “quite startling” to see the number of senior representatives who met with DFO on June 27.

“I actually didn’t realize they were so interested in this piece of marine seascape,” she said. “But I think to them, it’s about their right to all the oceans on the East Coast of Canada. That’s the only reason they would assemble such a cast of characters.”

CAPP’s submission claims no serious impacts on marine mammals

Following the publication of the draft regulations on June, there was a 30-day window for public comment.

On July 21, three days before the window closed, CAPP sent its final comments to DFO. Signed by Paul Barnes — the director of the Atlantic Canada and Arctic regions for the association — the letter outlines CAPP’s argument for why it thinks that seismic and drilling activity in the region wouldn’t be seriously harmful to species and ecosystems.

Specifically, CAPP emphasized there have been no documented marine mammal injuries or deaths as a result of seismic surveys. In addition, it noted that impacts of drilling and production at two large offshore sites in Atlantic Canada have had negligible impacts on sediment and water quality monitoring.

Rodolphe Devillers, geography professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland and lead researcher at the Marine Geomatics Research Lab, reviewed CAPP’s final submission and said in an interview with The Narwhal that the facts presented appear accurate. However, he added the caveat:  “It’s just always a question of what facts they select in their letters and not others.”

For example, it’s true that there haven’t been any documented marine mammal mortalities as a consequence of seismic surveys, as it’s very difficult to relate deaths to specific sources.

It’s also consistent with the conservation objectives listed in the federal government’s draft regulations, with a particular focus on preventing “human-induced mortality.”

But as noted by Devillers, the overarching objective of the MPA is to “conserve biodiversity through the protection of key species and their habitats, ecosystem structure and function, and through scientific research.”

To him, and many other ocean scientists, that overarching objective requires the prevention of a wide range of disturbance and harms, not just deaths — something largely unknown due to a lack of scientific studies in the region.

“We do know as scientists that seismic activities do have a number of impacts, which can be loss of hearing, challenges to feed and communicate … Those affect the primary objective of the MPA.”

Seismic testing ‘serious’ pollutant: scientists

A 2013 report by Dalhousie University biologist Lindy Weilgart concluded that at least 37 marine species have been shown to be impacted by seismic testing, and that airgun noise “must be considered a serious marine environmental pollutant.”

On June 22, 2017 — incidentally, a single day before the government released its draft regulations — an article was published in Nature Ecology & Evolution that concluded seismic surveys can double or triple the death rates of zooplankton within a 1.2 kilometre radius. The authors wrote: “Significant impacts on plankton by anthropogenic sources have enormous implications for ocean ecosystem structure and health.”

Devillers voiced similar concerns about CAPP’s positioning on potential contamination.

In the final submission, CAPP said that no drill waste or petrogenic hydrocarbons have ever been detected “outside the 500 metre safety zone during drilling or operations phases” of nearby offshore projects. But Devillers noted that “even if it’s within 100 metres, it’s an impact on the ecosystem.”

“Sometimes things go wrong,” he said. “How willing are we to accept that things can go wrong? Even if it’s one chance in 50 years or something, that’s not acceptable. And they cannot guarantee that this will not happen.”

A simple fix could set clear standard for marine protected areas

A simple solution to all of this would be to amend the Oceans Act to prohibit all extractive activities in Marine Protected Areas, said Linda Nowlan, staff lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law.

Currently, each distinct protected area  is governed by an individual regulation, which can prohibit and allow certain activities. That’s why the Laurentian Channel Marine Protected Area allows oil and gas activities while the nearby St. Anns Bank Marine Protected Area banned them.

In comparison, Canada’s “National Marine Conservation Areas” — which include Ontario’s Fathom Five National Marine Park and Quebec’s Saguenay-St. Lawrence Marine Park — have a blanket prohibition of oil and gas activities.

Nowlan suggested the federal government should take advantage of its ongoing amendments to the Oceans Act to prohibit all “harmful activities,” including oil, gas and mineral exploration and development.

“It sets the bar from the start so industries can’t go into negotiations and whittle down protection, which is what seems to have happened in Laurentian Channel,” Nowlan said.

The government is expected to release the final regulations this year.

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 an ocean valley becomes federally protected but seismic work and offshore drilling is allowed in more than 80 per cent of the territory, is it really federally protected?

That’s the question facing Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans, which is currently working on the final regulations for the 11,619 square kilometre Laurentian Channel Marine Protected Area off the southwest coast of Newfoundland.

The proposed regulations published on June 24 in the Canada Gazette included significant allowances for offshore oil and gas exploration and drilling, as well a reduction by more than one-third in the actual size of the Marine Protected Area (MPA) from the original area plotted out in 2007.

The government admitted the regulations came about after fossil fuel lobbyists “raised concerns with respect to limitations on potential future activities.”

The proposal came as a shock to conservation specialists, who contend industrial activities contradict the protected area’s conservation goals.

“We have felt the federal government has been much more willing to concede to industry interests and concerns as opposed to listening to the scientists who are making the recommendations about the high standards of protection that are needed for the site,” said Sigrid Kuehnemund, marine biologist and lead specialist for oceans with World Wildlife Fund Canada, in an interview with DeSmog Canada.

The window for public comment on the proposed regulations closes July 24. The World Wildlife Fund, LeadNow and the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society are rallying comments before the deadline.

The Laurentian Channel between New Brunswick and Newfoundland is home to a deep-sea canyon that is 1400 km long — more than three times as long and almost twice as wide as the Grand Canyon. Map: NRCan.

If such concessions remain in the enacted regulations they would allow seismic surveying during an eight-month window in the “core protection zone” and full oil and gas activities in the much larger “adaptive management zone.”

Such a decision would also set the tone for Marine Protected Areas to come.

“Because it is so big and well known, the Laurentian Channel MPA is going to set a precedent for the rest of the MPA network in how we meet that 10 per cent commitment,” said Emilie Novaczek, a marine conservation biologist and PhD candidate in geography at Memorial University of Newfoundland, in an interview with DeSmog Canada.

“I think it’s really important we get this one right so the rest of the network can follow suit.”

Only 0.11 Per Cent of Canada’s Ocean Territory Protected

Canada’s oceans are almost entirely unprotected.

A 2016 report by the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society reported that a mere 0.11 per cent of the country’s ocean territory is covered with an implemented “Marine Protected Area,” the oceanic equivalent of a national park. Incredibly, eight out of the 23 — or over one-third of the protected areas in the country — don’t explicitly prohibit oil and gas activity.

Meanwhile, only nine of the MPAs prohibit all forms of fishing.

That’s why it was a very big deal when the federal Liberals pledged to increase Marine Protected Area coverage to five per cent by 2017 and 10 per cent by 2020, in line with targets set by the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity.

In addition, the Liberals promised to “use scientific evidence and the precautionary principle, and take into account climate change, when making decisions affecting fish stocks and ecosystem management.”

The Canadian Environmental Law Association describes the precautionary principle as “the duty to prevent harm, when it is within our power to do so, even when all the evidence is not in.”

In other words, the Liberals promised to not only dramatically increase the quantity but also the quality of ocean territory protections.

Laurentian Channel Home to Whales, Turtles

As it turns out, the politics of creating a Marine Protected Area are very contested.

The Laurentian Channel was announced as an “area of interest” in 2010. There are plenty of good reasons for the designation: the World Wildlife Fund describes the area as a summer feeding area for humpback and minke whales, as well as endangered blue and North Atlantic right whales.

The Department of Fisheries and Oceans notes on its website that the area serves as home for porbeagle shark, smooth skate and corals. It has the highest concentration of sea pens — a soft coral — off Canada’s eastern coast.

Porbeagle shark. © naturepl.com /Doug Perrine / Courtesy World Wildlife Fund Canada

The Laurentian Channel also has the highest concentration of black dogfish in the country’s ocean territory, serving as the shark’s only pupping area in Canada and two species at risk — the Northern wolffish and leatherback sea turtle — are found in the area. To top it all off, the channel serves as feeding area for many migratory whale species including humpback and blue whales.

But there are also potential offshore oil and gas opportunities.

One reason provided by the federal government for not prohibiting exploration and drilling in the Marine Protected Area was because the reservoirs have low potential due to depressed prices and the level of front-end capital investment required.

Husky Oil had an exploration lease within the area, but it expired in 2014. Seismic and other geophysical surveys used to locate oil and gas reserves have also occurred.

However, a vice-president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers recently told the Globe & Mail that “we think that whole area still holds some promise and “it’s a gas-prone area but there are companies that think there’s the presence of oil there as well.”

In an interview with Hakai Magazine, the same vice-president said, “We felt the Laurentian Channel was a very good, balanced MPA.”

Incidentally, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans reported that “costs to the oil and gas industry are anticipated to be negligible” from the implementation of the Marine Protection Area.

One of the subject matters listed by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers in its federal lobbying profile is “National Marine Conservation Areas Act related to workability and practicality of policy and regulations for oil and gas activity within marine protected areas.”

Oil and Gas Activities Can Seriously Harm Coral, Zooplankton, Whales

Perhaps unsurprisingly, such activities could have catastrophic impacts on the local animals and ecosystem.

As noted in the draft regulations, “oil and gas activities can cause permanent harm to coral and sea pens.” The government also suggested that impacts of oil exploration and development on fish, mammals and turtles is “considered reversible” due to the fact they’re mobile and can “move away from noises and other disturbances.”

Rodolphe Devillers, geography professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland, responded in an open letter, calling the claim “embarrassing to say the least” and asking “since when is chasing species away from their core habitats and possibly from the conservation area an acceptable conservation practice?”

Devillers also pointed to a recent journal article in Nature that suggested the 220 to 250 decibel sound waves created by the seismic surveys can kill huge numbers of zooplankton — which serve as food for fish and other marine organisms — over a kilometre away. The use of seismic airguns can also have catastrophic impacts on whales, dolphins, fish and turtles.

The Laurentian Channel is an important foraging area for endangered leatherback turtles. The turtles can weigh up to 900 kilograms. Photo: dchrisoh via Flickr.

Kuehnemund of World Wildlife Fund Canada said that other impacts from oil and gas activity could include the contamination of food webs, dispersion of toxic drilling waste, noise pollution and considerably higher potential for catastrophic oil spills.

Other nearby MPAs including St. Anns Bank and the Gully banned oil and gas exploration and drilling, arguably following the federal government’s guidelines that “only activities that are determined through an ecological risk assessment to be compatible with the conservation objectives of the proposed MPA would be allowed to continue.”

The draft regulations for the Laurentian Channel currently allow for seismic activity throughout the MPA for eight months of the year, even within the core protection zone. Actual drilling activity will be permissible in a vast majority of the area, “so long as they are not likely to destroy marine habitat in the proposed MPA.”

“The basic thing is that this kind of activity doesn’t belong in any kind of protected area, let alone a marine protected area,” said Sabine Jessen, national director of the oceans program at the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, in an interview with DeSmog Canada.

“We don’t allow those kinds of things to happen in our terrestrial protected areas. So why are we allowing that kind of industrial use in a marine protected area?”

Industry Sways Feds to Allow Offshore #Drilling in #LaurentianChannel Marine Protected Area https://t.co/Bcwup59ADn #cdnpoli @WWFCanada

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) July 22, 2017

Federal Governments Admits Industry Influence In Draft Regulations

It appears the oil and gas industry has had a significant amount of influence over the decision to open up ocean territory to exploration and drilling, as well as restricting the boundaries of the actual protected area.

The draft regulation from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was remarkably transparent on this front, noting that fossil fuel lobbyists “raised concerns with respect to limitations on potential future activities” given the original Zones 1a and 1b were “inaccessible to directional drilling.”

As a result, the federal government made “subsequent modifications” to the boundaries of the core protection zone, while acknowledging concerns from environmentalists and academics that the decision was made “exclusively on possible economic gains in the future.”

But it wasn’t just the core protection zone. The very boundaries of the Marine Protected Area itself were cut down by over 33 per cent. Devillers reported in his public letter that this change led to 43 per cent of the abundance and 48 per cent of the biomass being left outside of the MPA, compared to original plans.

He also noted the Department of Fisheries and Oceans used very outdated information on the area’s sea pen populations; recent research from 2016 indicates there is sea pen habitat throughout much of the Marine Protected Area, including in much of the Adapted Management Zone that would be open to oil and gas activities.

Critics Call on DFO to Close Off Area to Oil and Gas, Review Reduction in Boundaries

It’s not like these facts aren’t known by many other scientists.

Novaczek emphasized there’s been “a lot of excellent work” that’s gone into planning the MPA. The problem that she points to is the actual implementation process: while a lot of research and consultations preceded the drafting of the regulations, scientists didn’t get to review the plan before it was published.

Jessen also notes the process is somewhat stacked against conservationists.

“It’s usually one seat for conservation and then you’ve got this array of industry players who are trying to protect what they’ve been allowed to do for a long time,” she says. “We have to try to negotiate this every single time for every single marine protected area. That’s just unacceptable.”

She recommends that a set of minimum standards for acceptable and unacceptable practices in Marine Protected Areas be created to ensure that such a situation doesn’t keep happening.

Specifically, many critics are calling on the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to close the area to oil and gas activities — like it has already done for commercial fishing — and get rid of the idea to have two-tiered zoning. In addition, some are advocating for a review of how the reduction in boundaries will impact conservation goals.

“We don’t get those rewards unless we make sure we’re protecting the right areas and protecting them fully with well-planned and enforced and well-regulated MPAs,” Novaczek concluded. “There’s lots of people from researchers to fishers who see this allowance for oil and gas activity within the MPA as a significant problem.”

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.