Woodfibre LNG, a liquefied natural gas export facility planned for Howe Sound on the southern B.C. coast, is a big step closer to construction following receipt of a key permit from the B.C. Oil and Gas Commission on Tuesday.

The eight-page permit outlines the requirements the facility, owned by Indonesian billionaire Sukanto Tanoto, must meet for design, construction and operation — including a tsunami hazard study, a flaring notification plan and reports on emissions such as noise and black smoke.

The waters of the 44-kilometre long Howe Sound fjord, flanked by the Coast Mountains, are home to fragile glass sponge reefs, salmon, herring, porpoises and whales. Long polluted by industries on its shores, including a large copper mine, Howe Sound was returning to life after extensive rehabilitation efforts when Woodfibre and other new industrial developments were proposed.

Woodfibre LNG president David Keane called the permit “a positive step forward” for the project, which would see LNG offloaded from floating storage tanks near Squamish to LNG carriers as long as six football fields.

The LNG carriers would traverse the island-studded waterways of Howe Sound three to four times a month, accompanied by three tugboats and two pilots familiar with B.C.’s coast, according to the company.

“This permit is a large piece of our puzzle, and with it in place, we are working towards a final investment decision to proceed with this project this summer,” Keane said Wednesday in a news release.

Fracked gas export project to add carbon emissions equivalent to 170,000 cars 

According to the Pembina Institute, carbon emissions from the Woodfibre LNG project would add the equivalent of 170,000 new cars to B.C. roads each year, while the project would use the same amount of freshwater annually as 5,500 households.

Gas for Woodfibre LNG will be fracked in northeast B.C. and sent via pipeline to the coast.

Eoin Finn, a spokesperson for the Howe Sound group My Sea to Sky, said he is concerned that the oil and gas commission’s permit approves the use of two aging LNG tankers that Woodfibre plans to bring from Singapore for floating LNG storage.

According to the company, the permanently moored tankers will be “refurbished.”

The 40-year-old tankers are “way past their best before date,” said Finn, a former partner with the global accounting firm KPMG who resides on Bowyer Island in Howe Sound.

“They would normally have been scrapped by now,” Finn told The Narwhal. “They’re amongst the oldest two per cent of the world’s 400-strong LNG tanker fleet. Both have been in accidents and have been patched up.”

Finn said new LNG tankers have thick hulls but old ones can develop weak spots and rust can affect the stability of the hull and joints.

“If you get a leak from the tanks onto marine steel at minus 160 [degrees Celsius — the temperature to which gas is cooled in the liquefaction process] marine steel becomes really brittle and you could hit that hull with a hammer and break it into bits.”

Tankers carrying flammable gas will intersect ferry crossings  

Finn, who holds a PhD in physical chemistry, said the U.S. does not allow LNG plants or tankers within 3.5 kilometres of significant populated areas.

“That cargo is full of flammable gas with the thermal equivalent of 72 Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs aboard.”

Carriers picking up Woodfibre LNG will intersect with four ferry crossings in waterways with both freighter and recreational boat traffic, Finn pointed out.

If a collision occurs and a loaded LNG tanker develops a hole, everything within 500 metres will be frozen, Finn said. Should a tanker carrying LNG catch fire, he said people up to 3.5 kilometres away will suffer severe burns.

Woodfibre LNG is a member of the Society of International Gas Tanker and Terminal Operators, an industry organization that has promoted best practices in the LNG shipping and terminal industries for the past 40 years.

The society’s standards state that waterways containing navigational hazards are to be avoided as LNG ports and that ports must be located in places where vapours from a release or spill cannot affect civilians. “Long, narrow inland waterways are to be avoided, due to greater navigational risk,” according to the standards.

Woodfibre LNG did not respond to a request for comment from The Narwhal by our deadline.

The location of the Woodfibre LNG project in Howe Sound. Map: The Future of Howe Sound Society

Orcas and other at-risk species could suffer from noise, flaring 

Finn said he is also concerned the Oil and Gas Commission permit allows the LNG facility to emit noise, light and black smoke and flares.

The permit stipulates the public, the district of Squamish and three nearby First Nations must be notified at least 24 hours before a planned flaring event or within 24 hours of the start of an unplanned flaring event lasting more than four hours.

“This ruling gives them permission to flare any time they want,” Finn said. “A flare is not my definition of a sightly object in the primary tourist route to Whistler.”

The Woodfibre LNG project, on the site of a former pulp and paper mill seven kilometres southwest of Squamish, has already received environmental assessment approvals from the B.C. and federal governments.

Orca whales, grey whales, Pacific white-sided dolphins and harbour porpoises will be subject to potential sensory disturbances from the project, according to Woodfibre’s executive summary for the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.

Nine bird species listed as vulnerable to extinction, including the barn swallow and coastal western screech owl, and three at-risk amphibian species (the coastal tailed frog, Northern red-legged frog and Western toad) will be subject to potential sensory disturbances, habitat fragmentation and barriers to movement, the summary states.

Woodfibre donated generously to B.C. Liberals and NDP

The Oil and Gas Commission permit is the first major authorization for Woodfibre LNG issued by B.C.’s NDP government, which green-lighted the much larger LNG Canada project last year.

Woodfibre LNG, which employs NDP operative and former NDP cabinet minister Moe Sihota as a lobbyist, is a private company owned by Pacific Oil and Gas, which is part of the Singapore- based Royal Golden Eagle group of companies owned by Tanoto. Forbes pegs Tanoto’s personal wealth at US $1.4 billion.

The Royal Golden Eagle group, which has assets exceeding $20 billion, includes pulp and paper and palm oil divisions.

Woodfibre LNG donated more than $137,000 to the B.C. Liberal Party between 2014 and 2017, according to the B.C. political donations database. The company donated more than $72,000 to the B.C. NDP over the same time frame.

More LNG projects ‘knocking on our door’

Karen Tam Wu, regional director of B.C. for the Pembina Institute, a clean energy think tank, said Woodfibre LNG and the significantly larger LNG Canada project have already been considered in B.C.’s carbon “budget.”

LNG Canada will produce 9.6 megatonnes of carbon per year by 2050, according to the Pembina Institute. B.C.’s legislated target for total carbon pollution is 13 megatonnes a year by 2050.

“We’ve always known that this was coming … the challenge of meeting our climate commitments with this project and LNG Canada’s first phase is coming to fruition,” Wu told The Narwhal.

The B.C. government has said it will devise a plan within the next two years to enable B.C. to meet its 2030 carbon reduction goals. The government’s current plan is a blueprint for meeting only 75 per cent of B.C.’s targets.

“We do still need to see that,” Wu said. “And we have a lot of moving LNG proposals out there. So we need to see how the government will be able to get us on a path to fully meet our climate commitments and reconcile that with LNG projects that are knocking on our door.”

About 10 LNG facilities are still proposed for B.C., according to the group LNG in Northern B.C. As of January 2019, plans for seven additional LNG facilities had been cancelled.

LNG undermining carbon reduction goals: new report

LNG is often touted as a transition fuel to help lower global carbon emissions.

But a report released on Monday by the international non-profit group Global Energy Monitor found the international LNG boom is undermining global efforts to slow climate change.

Global LNG investments are “on a collision course” with the goals of the Paris climate change accord and Canada is one of the world’s worst offenders, according to the report.

Like the LNG Canada project, Woodfibre LNG will benefit from a host of public subsidies and electricity rates far lower than what residential BC Hydro customers pay.

Woodfibre has also signed an agreement with the Squamish First Nation that could see the nation receiving $225 million in benefits over 40 years.

Last week, Woodfibre announced it had signed an LNG sales and purchase agreement with BP Gas Marketing, with first delivery expected in 2023.

The National Energy Board issued a 40-year export licence for Woodfibre LNG in June 2017, extending the project’s original 25-year licence by 15 years.

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Remember that picture of a baby orca flying through the air like she was auditioning for the Broadway musical adaptation of Free Willy?

In 2015 you couldn’t open a Facebook, Instagram or Twitter feed without seeing the image and smiling. This baby orca, initially nicknamed Wiggles, is J-50 — the 50th member to join J-Pod since humans started counting and cataloguing southern resident orcas.

I talked to the photographer, Clint Rivers, just after he took that astonishing shot and he glowed as he shared the day, like he’d witnessed a miracle. This baby had just learned she could fly and she kept leaping — or, to use the boring scientific term for whales defying gravity and our imaginations, “breaching” over and over and over again.

She was Joy. She was Hope. Her photo became the symbol of West Coast whales — especially since this was the famous orca breach birth baby. Elder orcas helped deliver her, using their teeth to assist her mother, Slick (J-16), with the delivery. Slick was 42 at the time — believed to be beyond her reproductive years — so Scarlet truly was a miracle baby.   

The iconic image of infant Scarlet leaping through the air raised awareness of the animals. Photo: Clint Rivers

This whale was the magic that people travel to the West Coast of B.C. and Washington to experience. She was named Scarlet — because of the scars from her delivery. Also, I suspect, because The Avengers were a thing and I’m sure Black Widow seemed like a terrible name for a cute baby whale. Although, in hindsight, that was probably the way to go.

Scarlet was born in Dec. 2014 and kicked off the great baby boom of 2015 — which was (no coincidence) about two years after a banner year for Chinook salmon — the primary diet of the endangered southern residents. That year their numbers climbed to 83.

Now there are new pictures of Scarlet going viral. If you’re not familiar with orca anatomy, she still looks adorable — a perfect baby orca. The problem is she’s not a baby and the three-year-old is the size of a one-year-old. And there’s a depression at the back of her neck.

Scientists call that indentation “peanut head” — which is more proof scientists should never be allowed to name anything that might be shared with civilians. Peanut head sounds adorable, which is not the effect you want for a term that means she’s lost so much weight we can see her skeleton.

One of Scarlet’s pod mates, 20-year-old Tahlequah (J-35) just delivered the first live baby in the southern resident population in three years. Her daughter survived about half-an-hour before dying. She never flew through the air. She was never named by humans, though I know someone suggested calling her “Extinction” and I’ve suggested “Pandora” — since she’s even got government agencies thinking outside the box.

Early deaths for orcas aren’t uncommon, but three years without adding another live member to this population is catastrophic.

While the rest of the world watched Tahlequah grieve, orca experts on the West Coast have also been haunted by Scarlet. In most stories about Tahlequah carrying her daughter’s body there’s a brief mention that another whale is in trouble.

Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been following Scarlet around taking breath samples. Her breath and feces contain pathogens — another science word not meant for civilian consumption. It means germs.

Scarlet is starving and she’s sick and she’s sick because she’s starving. She’s lost 20 percent of her mass and as orcas get thinner, they live off their blubber. But the ketogenic diet isn’t a great idea for orcas since their blubber is where they store the generations of toxins we’ve dumped into the water. Orcas burning blubber are feeding off DDT, dioxins and all the other charming poisonous chemicals and plastics that are now primary links in our food chain.

NOAA and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada are looking to “intervene” to save Scarlet by feeding her live salmon and administering antibiotics. The Lummi Nation has live salmon in tanks ready to feed her. Of course, that requires finding J-Pod, who were just spotted again on Tuesday night outside Port Renfrew.      

NOAA has permission from the U.S. government to administer antibiotics and try to feed her. Canada’s department of Fisheries and Oceans announced Thursday morning that they are also cleared to assist Scarlet. But fog and choppy waters may make it difficult to spot Scarlet’s pod — nevermind get close enough to help her. Weather conditions aren’t expected to improve until Sunday.

Scarlet and her mother, J-16, swim together early in her life. Photo: John Durban (NOAA Fisheries), Holly Fearnbach (SR3) and Lance Barrett-Lennard (Vancouver Aquarium) via Flickr

Orca-advocacy organizations that might normally battle anyone looking to interfere with the whales’ lives are offering to help because, even if our governments are turning a blind eye to their environmental commitments, they’re at least finally following the Pottery Barn rule: “You Break It, You Bought It.”

Lynda Mapes, the orca reporter from the Seattle Times, wrote that she’s received private calls from politicians who can’t sleep because Tahlequah’s story is shattering them. Chances are their children and grandchildren are asking what they’re doing to help the whales. So let’s make sure every kid out there knows the flying baby whale they fell in love with is the “other orca” who’s dying.

Let’s make sure Prime Minister Justin Trudeau knows this as he decides whether it’s worth trampling the last of these black and white whales with the white elephant known as Trans Mountain — and as his government decides where to focus the funds being put into assisting the recovery of these iconic orcas.

Let’s take the moment to ask the B.C. government to look at licences for fish farms that have put wild salmon at risk.

Washington Governor, Jay Inslee, just asked his task force to consider breaching the Snake River dam. Here’s his number (360-902-4111). Here’s Senator Patty Murray’s number (206-553-5545). You can also share your thoughts with the task force online. It is accepting comments from Canadians and Ken Balcomb, founder of the Center for Whale Research, is urging us to weigh in.

Yes, there are plenty of things that need to happen to help the orcas, the Chinoook and the ocean that keeps us all alive.

But these whales are almost out of time.  If you think this world is better with the world’s most iconic orcas in it, this is the moment to demand action.

It’s up to us.

What’s the symbol you want for the future of the southern resident orcas — Tahlequah grieving or Scarlet defying gravity?

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Tahlequah is the whale heard around the world.

Just over a week ago, just off the coast of Victoria, the 20-year-old orca gave birth to the first new baby to enter the endangered Southern Resident population in three years. Less than an hour later her daughter was dead. Yes, researchers say the baby was female.

As of Thursday Tahlequah (aka J-35) has kept her daughter’s dead body afloat, and paraded her several hundred kilometres around the Salish Sea, for ten days.

Ken Balcomb, founder of the Centre for Whale Research in Washington State, believes she’s making a statement. To us.

Balcomb, has spent the last 40-plus years watching, or watching for, these orcas and he’s never seen anything like this. When we spoke on day three of Tahlequah’s mourning ritual an orca expert from New Zealand sent him a photo of a whale there who carried her decomposing calf for five days. At the time, five days seemed impossible.

Orcas may have done this before, but humans haven’t witnessed it. And now, thanks to Tahlequah, people around the world are learning that this critically endangered population is starving to death.

Tahlequah and her family are also showing the world what anyone familiar with orcas already knows. They look after each other. Jenny Atkinson, director of the Whale Museum on San Juan Island, says her family members are taking turns holding their lost future aloft.

This is a funeral. This is a ritual. This is love.

In Psychology Today, Marc Bekoff wrote, “Orca mom J-35 and her podmates are grieving… animals suffer from broken hearts just like we do.”

Yes, Tahlequah’s story is in Psychology Today.

Her story is everywhere. Tahlequah’s vigil is viral.

TIME shared it — although they kept the word “grieving” in quotation marks.

The New York Times has published several stories and their headlines aren’t putting grief in quotes.

Entertainment magazines like People are covering Tahlequah like she’s just been cast in a show by Shonda Rhimes.

Upworthy shared the Upworthy part of the tragedy — that females from Tahlequah’s family are grieving with her.

Lynda Mapes, who owns the orca beat for the Seattle Times, wrote that in 20 years of reporting she’s never seen anything like the emotions this story is stirring up. The Times is running an online questionnaire asking readers how the “plight” of this orca is affecting them and, more importantly, what they want done about it. The Victoria Times-Colonist is doing the same.

The world is watching.

In Canada that means the spotlight is on the proposed Trans Mountain pipeline and oil tanker project and threats to wild salmon. Before the Trans Mountain expansion was approved, the National Energy Board warned that if nothing went wrong with their pipeline and not a drop of oil ever spilled, the increased tanker traffic alone would result in “significant adverse effects” to the southern resident orcas.

I asked every orca expert I knew whether a population of 83 could survive “significant adverse effects.” They all offered me a variation on “hell no.” We’re now down to 75 orcas.

Almost everyone I’ve heard mention the impact of a seven-fold increase in oil tankers on the orcas refers to extinction as a “possibility,” but fails to cite a single expert who doesn’t believe it’s a certainty.

Canada’s federal government recently committed almost $170 million to finding threats to the southern residents that won’t upset Albertans. And, hey, there is a fisheries closure — though it’s later and less complete than orca experts warned would be vital this year.

I’d be delighted that the Trudeau government is spending $170 million to help these orcas if I didn’t suspect their endgame was to keep them alive just long enough for a future federal government to preside over their extinction.

The southern residents feed almost exclusively on Chinook salmon. For years, the federal and provincial governments have failed to take heed of warnings and expert recommendations on how to restore wild salmon populations.

The threats continue to pile up: The Narwhal recently reported that a provincial audit showed waste being dumped by fish processing facilities is “lethal to fish.” B.C. Environment Minister George Heyman has called the permitting of these facilities “outdated.”

Meanwhile, this spring the B.C. government announced confusing new fish farm rules that ask First Nations to decide what to do about the whole issue of fish farms on wild salmon migration routes. In a startling coincidence, the new rules won’t come into effect until after the next provincial election.

South of the border, the spotlight is on the Snake River dam — an anachronism that is now ineffective as an energy producer, but still does a world-class job of preventing salmon from reaching their spawning beds. But the Washington government would rather shoot sea lions — which makes sense, because no matter how well a sea lion can be trained, you still can’t get one to vote.

If U.S. environmentalists seize the moment, perhaps Tahlequah and her dead daughter can be the rallying point in the fight to save the Environmental Protection Act.

And Canadians can demand that our governments start acting on information we’ve had for years, instead of declaring that anything that could potentially cost votes requires further study.

Balcomb is urging people on both sides of the border to contact Governor Jay Inslee’s officewhile his orca task force is underway and to put the heat on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over the Trans Mountain pipeline and threats to wild salmon.

It’s time for everyone who cares about orcas, oceans and the planet to seize the moment and join J-Pod in holding Tahlequah’s dead daughter up for the world to see.

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For more than a week, the West Coast — and the world — have watched as a Southern Resident killer whale mother carries her dead calf in what experts describe as a display of grief.

The calf was born on July 24 and lived for only half an hour — not long enough to be named under the system researchers use to identify each individual member of this endangered population.

Since then, its mother, J35, has carried it — usually on her head, sometimes carefully in her mouth and with a deep dive to recover it every time she takes a moment’s break. She has been doing this without interruption for so long that researchers are concerned about the consequences for her own health.

Scientists say orcas aren’t the only animals that mourn their dead. Other whales and dolphins have also been known to “keep vigils” for deceased podmates.

But the depth of J35’s display of grief has been particularly striking.

“What is beyond grief?” Deborah Giles, a research scientist for the University of Washington Center for Conservation Biologist is quoted as saying in the Seattle Times. “I don’t know what the word for that is, but that is where (the mother) is.”

The loss also highlights the critical circumstances the Southern Residents face.

As of today, the endangered Southern Resident killer whale population numbers only 75. In addition to watching J35, researchers are anxiously monitoring a four-year-old female, J50, who is dangerously emaciated and may not survive.

These salmon-eating resident killer whales, whose critical habitat is located in the transboundary waters of the Salish Sea off British Columbia and Washington State, have not produced a surviving calf since 2015. Recent research shows that 69 per cent of pregnancies are failing, likely due to poor nutrition.

The federal government acknowledged in May that this killer whale population faces “imminent threats to its survival.” The main threats are the lack of availability of Chinook salmon prey, underwater noise that interferes with basic life functions and communication, and environmental contamination.

Now that they’ve found that there are imminent threats to survival, the Ministers of Fisheries and Oceans and Environment and Climate Change are legally obligated to recommend that Cabinet issue an emergency order to protect the Southern Residents, unless there are already equivalent legal measures in place.

Ecojustice petitioned the ministers to do this in January, on behalf of the David Suzuki Foundation, Georgia Strait Alliance, Natural Resources Defense Council, Raincoast Conservation Foundation and World Wildlife Fund. The petition identified specific measures that an emergency order should include, including the creation of feeding refuges closed to fishing and whale-watching, and measures to address underwater noise from shipping.

Rather than recommend an emergency order to ensure urgent the suite of protections needed, the ministers have taken limited steps on some issues by implementing fishery closures in some of the whales’ foraging areas and by clarifying, in long-overdue amendments to federal regulations, that commercial and recreational whale watchers must stay 200 metres away from killer whales. The other actions announced are voluntary, research-oriented, yet to begin,and/or lacking timelines. More is needed, and urgently.

Meanwhile, the federal government is contradicting its partial measures to protect the whales by pushing forward with the Trans Mountain pipeline, which would add 816 oil tanker trips per year — a sevenfold increase — through the whales’ critical habitat.

The National Energy Board found that the marine shipping aspect of the project would have “significant adverse effects” on the species and that an oil spill would be “potentially catastrophic.” The lack of any measures to address those effects in the board’s report and in the government’s approval of the project is the subject of ongoing litigation by Ecojustice on behalf of Raincoast Conservation Foundation and Living Oceans Society.

J35 is unwittingly putting on a prolonged, public display of the devastating consequences of inaction on these issues. We will see this sad scene repeated again and again unless meaningful action is taken.

If this week’s heart-wrenching images don’t inspire action, what will?

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The federal government has announced over $12 million to enhance protections for endangered whales on the West Coast, especially the endangered Southern resident killer whale.

That population, at 76 animals, is at its lowest point since live capture for aquariums was banned in 1975, prompting urgent calls for federal intervention.

As part of the $1.5 billion federal Oceans Protection Plan, $9 million of the newly announced funds will go towards reducing collisions between ships and whales.

Another $3.1 million is set aside for research into threats to whales, underwater listening stations and research into the health of chinook salmon populations, the prefered food source for Southern resident killer whales.

David Hannay, chief science officer of JASCO Applied Sciences, which operates a listening station in the Strait of Georgia, welcomed the news.

“I think it’s a very good thing. I believe that noise has been overlooked,” he told DeSmog Canada. “These animals use sound the way humans use vision.”

Hannay says traffic noise has been steady over the two-and-a-half years the company has been monitoring the area.

Andrew Trites, director of the UBC Marine Mammal Research Unit which will receive $1.1 of the new funding, said he welcomes a federal government friendly to research and science.

“We only have to think back to the previous federal government when so many scientific programs were cut. I’m quite excited for what lies ahead.”

“The population is small and declining, and the decline is expected to continue.” https://t.co/QTdLKFvctr

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) March 16, 2018

More action to protect killer whales urgently needed

While some are celebrating government’s commitment to further research, some scientists say what’s urgently needed is action, not more study.

“We could study them literally to death at this point,” says Paul Paquet, adjunct professor at the University of Victoria and senior scientist with the Raincoast Conservation Foundation.* 

“What we’re really looking for from the federal government right now is threat reductions,” says Misty MacDuffee, a biologist at Raincoast.

In February, Raincoast, along with a number of other prominent NGOs including Ecojustice, David Suzuki Foundation, and the World Wildlife Fund, asked the government to immediately issue an emergency order under the Species At Risk Act to protect salmon stocks and habitat for the whales by the beginning of March.

The groups pointed out killer whales’ feeding grounds and the salmon populations they depend on have been deteriorating at the hands of noisy and dangerous ship traffic, chemical pollutants, commercial and recreational fisheries, warmer water temperatures and other industrial activity for decades.

The federal government did not impose emergency orders to protect the whales by March 1, as the groups requested, but fisheries minister Dominic LeBlanc told the Canadian Press Thursday that there could be action coming soon.

“We’re going to be making a series of decisions in the coming weeks that may necessarily represent some disruption for certain sectors but will be guided by scientific advice and our solemn responsibility to ensure the protection and recovery of southern resident killer whales,” LeBlanc told the news service.

According to the scientists, some follow-through is long overdue.

“Our major concern is that most of this has been well known since the early 2000s,” Paquet said.

In 2008, the federal government released a recovery strategy for Southern resident killer whales, which at times took on a gloomy tone.

“The population is small and declining, and the decline is expected to continue,” it read.

“Southern residents are limited by the availability of their principal prey, Chinook salmon. There are forecasts of continued low abundance of Chinook salmon. Southern residents are also threatened by increasing physical and acoustical disturbance, oil spills and contaminants.”

“It was clearly acknowledged by our federal government in 2008,” Paquet said. “We’ve been waiting and waiting for the government to take some sort of action that would at least contribute to the protection of killer whales, but none has been taken to date.”

But Trites welcomed the opportunity to do more research, saying the vast majority of studies done on B.C.’s killer whales is focused on the Northern resident population.

“The Southern resident population — they’re the outlier. Other killer whales are doing extremely well. On top of that other marine mammals off the coast of B.C. are doing well,” Tites told DeSmog Canada.

The Southern resident population resides in waters near Vancouver Island and travel as far south as California, some of the busiest waterways for the species, Tites said. He added there are other species putting pressure on the whales, like an increasing population of sea lions that compete for chinook.

“There are lots of things at play here. I think we know enough to take some initial steps to lesson stressors on these whales. But we need more research to be effective.”

“I can tell you I’ve spent my entire career studying ecosystems and changes and usually what you think is the most obvious cause it not the cause at all,” Tites said.

Trans Mountain pipeline clashes with species at risk

MacDuffee said announcements like today’s obscure the federal government’s lack of concrete steps like habitat restoration, creation of protected areas, noise restrictions, fisheries closures and quota reductions — actions she says are less politically palatable than research funding.

Southern resident killer whales were listed as endangered in 2003, the same year Northern resident killer whales were listed as threatened. It look the federal government five years to release a recovery plan.

Despite the listing, the federal government has failed to introduce key measures to protect critical habitat.

In 2012 the environmental legal firm Ecojustice took Canada to court for failing to protect critical habitat for Northern and Southern resident orcas within the 180-day window mandated by the Species At Risk Act.

“The government has produced a recovery strategy and it’s produced an action plan, but so far these documents are just plans to make plans,” Dyna Tuytel, a lawyer for Ecojustice told DeSmog in February.

“What’s needed is to actually implement what we’ve learned about the species and what needs to be done.”

In October 2017 Raincoast and the Living Oceans Society took the federal government to court for approving the Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline without assessing how the project’s seven-fold increase in oil tanker traffic would affect Southern Resident killer whales.

According to the two groups, the Trans Mountain project represents an existential threat to the population.

The project’s approval has led some experts to criticize Canada’s soft approach to species at risk legislation.

Ship noise is already harming the whales, according to a recent study. It found noise from up to 1,600 ships over the two-year study period was blocking their ability to find their prey.

The Port of Vancouver’s ECHO program has received international recognition for its trial of a slowdown zone in Haro Strait, which concluded that slowing down had a measurable effect on ambient noise in nearby critical killer whale habitat.

The goal of the EcoAction Incentive Program, developed as a result of research conducted by ECHO, is eventually to develop a fee system for ships that would depend on the noise they generate, incentivizing companies to invest in quieter, but more expensive ships.*

MacDuffee and Paquet say that such reductions in speed and the associated noise are essential — but that they need to be implemented now, rather than waiting for the results of further study.

* Update: March 19, 11:38 am PST. This story was updated to note the fact that Paul Paquet is a senior scientists with the Raincoast Conservation Program and to clarify the goal of the EcoAction Incentive Program.

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Time is running out for the remaining 76 orcas that make up B.C.’s Southern Resident killer whale population and the federal government should take action to intervene, say a coalition of environmental groups petitioning Ottawa for an emergency order under the Species At Risk Act.

The groups say the petition is coming now because they believe the endangered population is at a critical juncture.

“There isn’t time to wait around,” said Dyna Tuytel, a lawyer for Ecojustice, which filed the petition on behalf of the David Suzuki Foundation, World Wildlife Fund, Georgia Strait Alliance, Raincoast Conservation Foundation and the U.S.-based Natural Resources Defense Council.

The Southern Resident population lives around southern Vancouver Island and down into Washington’s Puget Sound. The three pods comprising the population haven’t produced a calf that’s survived since 2015.

Overall, the population is at its lowest point since before a ban on live-capture for aquariums took effect in 1975.

According to Raincoast biologist Misty MacDuffee, the population is suffering from a lack of food, stress from disturbance and the cumulative effects of pollution in their environment.

“It’s gotten to the point where we’re losing healthy reproductive animals,” MacDuffee told DeSmog Canada. She says a loss like that can affect the health of the entire population.

The petition asks the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna, as well as the Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc, to intervene.

The groups want more protected habitat, measures to help Chinook salmon recover, protection from whale watching boats and speed limits and noise reduction for vessels in the area, among other measures.

The ministers have been asked to impose the emergency orders by March 1.

Pressure from ships, fisheries, pollution

Chinook salmon are the preferred meal of the Southern Resident orcas. But the fish in the whales’ range have been suffering in recent decades, with 11 of the 15 populations the Department of Fisheries and Oceans adequately studied (there are 35 total) found to be in the “red zone,” indicating an unhealthy population.

Fifty-five thousand recreational fishing trips take place in the Southern Residents’ range each year, both removing fish and disturbing the whales while they forage.

Meanwhile, hunting has become increasingly difficult for the whales as noise from passing ships and boats hampers their communication and scrambles their echolocation, the primary tool the whales use to find their prey.

Finally, accumulation of pollutants such as PCBs in the environment, which mimics hormones in mammals, could be affecting the whales’ ability to reproduce.

“These things act synergistically,” says MacDuffee.

But the groups say there’s an even bigger threat.

Government dragging heels on endangered species responsibilities

“The biggest problem this species faces is a lethargy on behalf of the government, and an inability to take decisive action,” says Christianne Wilhelmson, executive director of the Georgia Strait Alliance.

“I’m at a loss for saying why this government won’t act, except a lack of courage, and a lack of will .… Choosing not to decide is still making a choice.”

The Species At Risk Act fully took effect in 2004, and lays out the government’s responsibility to protect endangered species, such as the Southern Resident killer whales.

But so far, the groups say planning and bureaucracy have dominated while tangible action, such as protecting critical habitat, has been lacking. That criticism have also been levelled at the government with regard to other species, such as woodland caribou.

In 2012, the government lost a lawsuit to Ecojustice, which said Canada had failed to protect critical habitat for Northern and Southern Resident orcas within the 180-day window mandated by the Species At Risk Act.

“The government has produced a recovery strategy and it’s produced an action plan, but so far these documents are just plans to make plans,” says Tuytel of Ecojustice. “What’s needed is to actually implement what we’ve learned about the species and what needs to be done.”

Jeffery Young, senior science and policy analyst at the David Suzuki Foundation, agrees.

“It’s been over a decade that the government has known that these species are endangered,” says Young. “The process under the Species At Risk Act requires them to make certain steps toward recovery; however, they’ve found places within that process where they can delay. And they’ve constantly delayed.”

Since the courts found the federal government had failed to follow its own laws to protect critical habitat for the whales, the feds have approved the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain oil pipeline and tanker project, which will create a seven-fold increase in the number of oil tankers travelling through critical habitat for endangered orca.  

Fisheries and Oceans Minister Dominic LeBlanc declined to comment for this story. Catherine McKenna’s office did not respond to a request for comment from DeSmog Canada.

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Canadian governments are sitting by and watching as endangered species disappear, in what one environmental lawyer calls a “slow moving catastrophe.”

The latest blow comes as a deadline for provinces to outline plans to protect threatened caribou habitat blew by without a single province meeting the deadline.

“This is 13 years after this species was listed as threatened. There’s been 13 years of decline of caribou, 13 years of deterioration of their habitat,” Ecojustice lawyer Sean Nixon told DeSmog Canada.

Caribou were first listed as threatened under Canada’s Species At Risk Act in 2004. It took eight years and litigation to get the federal government to come up with a recovery strategy, as required under law. That federal strategy ended up pushing the responsibility back to the provinces.

It’s been a similar story with British Columbia’s endangered orca. The northern and southern residents were listed as threatened and endangered respectively in 2003. It took the federal government five years to come up with a recovery strategy.

That recovery strategy identified critical habitat, which should have been protected within 180 days by law. But the government didn’t take action, so Ecojustice took the feds to court, where they won in 2012.

The problem is that even since the court ruling forced the federal government to issue a protection order, things haven’t improved.

“They seem to have felt that they have carte blanche to continue to destroy the habitat of an endangered species,” Nixon said.

How the U.S. manages endangered species

Protests from industry and the provinces and a lack of enforcement from the federal government has created gridlock. But Canada need look no further than the U.S. to see that endangered species can be managed more effectively.

“The U.S. has run a successful industrial economy for 40 years under the Endangered Species Act,” Nixon said. “For some reason, we have this notion in Canada that that would never work here, that it’d just shut down industry if we paid attention to the needs of at-risk species. We need only look south of the border to see that’s not true.”

The Endangered Species Act became law in the U.S. in 1973, 31 years before Canada enacted similar legislation.

“I think the biggest lesson from the U.S. is that it takes some time to turn species around, it takes decades, but it does happen eventually if you protect and restore habitat,” Nixon said.

Catherine Kilduff, a senior attorney with the Centre for Biological Diversity in the U.S., said the U.S. law has teeth.

“The critical habitat provisions in the U.S. mean something. There are U.S. Supreme Court cases that say how important they are and how they really do determine how federal actions can proceed,” Kilduff told DeSmog Canada.

University of Montana biologist Erin Sexton told DeSmog Canada the key difference between Canada and the U.S. is that when critical habitat is designated in the U.S., industrial activity is essentially off the table.

In national forests in the transboundary Flathead area of northern Montana, where Sexton works, “we haven’t built a new road in decades” due to the protection of grizzly bear habitat.

All proposed projects have to pass an environmental impact assessment that considers cumulative impacts on the landscape, not just the incremental impacts of that particular project.

“We have a requirement that we look at past, present and future impacts,” says Sexton. (Canada is currently reviewing its environmental assessment process, including how it evaluates cumulative impacts.)

When asked whether changes under Trump could make the United States more like Canada in its species protection, Sexton paused.

“My initial reaction is, ‘wow, no I don’t think it can get that bad,’ ” she said.

The Trump administration just halted an oil and gas lease sale near eastern Idaho’s Grays Lake National Wildlife Refuge after groups filed formal protests because fracking and drilling would threaten the greater sage grouse and violate federal conservation plans for the bird.

A brief history of Canada’s Species At Risk Act

In Canada, federal legislation to protect endangered species didn’t come into force until 2004.

Further complicating matters, under Canada’s Species At Risk Act, the federal government only takes responsibility for aquatic species and species on federal lands, while the provinces are given primary responsibility over everything else.

“There’s a much stronger assertion of federal authority in the United States,” Nixon said. “The federal government is responsible for all species.”

The problem with responsibility for endangered species falling to the provinces is that the provinces are also responsible for resource development.

“The provinces are all addicted to the short-term cash flow from the liquidation of raw resources,” Nixon said. “The federal government is removed from that resource fray, so there’s less influence on the federal government from specific companies or industries.”

The good news is the federal government does have the constitutional authority to step in and protect species at risk. The bad news is, it hasn’t exercised it yet.

“They’ve been sitting there idly while the provinces have proved they’re unwilling to protect Canada’s wildlife,” Nixon said.

Orcas vs. oil tankers

To add insult to injury, not only is Canada failing to protect the habitat of endangered species — but in many instances, it is actually making matters worse.

In B.C., the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline will create a seven-fold increase in the number of oil tankers travelling through critical habitat for endangered orca. There are just 76  southern resident orcas remaining.

In October, environmental groups took the federal government to court over its decision to grant permits for the oil pipeline.

“We have repeatedly said that Cabinet based its approval of this project on an unlawful National Energy Board report that failed to apply the Species at Risk Act and mitigate impacts on Southern Resident killer whales,” said Dyna Tuytel, a lawyer for Ecojustice.

“This chain of flawed decision-making almost guarantees the extinction of this already endangered population.”

The National Energy Board excluded adverse impacts caused by tankers from its environmental assessment, according to Karen Wristen, executive director of Living Oceans Society.

“As a result, no environmental assessment of the impacts of increased tanker traffic was undertaken,” Wristen said.

Meanwhile in Alberta, the province has been granting tenures to oil and gas companies in critical caribou habitat.

Woodland caribou can handle disturbance of about 35 per cent of their habitat. But in some of the Alberta ranges, more than 90 per cent of the caribou’s habitat has been disturbed by forestry, seismic lines, well pads, pipeline rights-of-way and oilsands projects.

Some herds are down to fewer than 100 animals.

“This is an example where the federal government and provincial government seems to be sitting and watching as a species disappears,” Nixon said.

“We could see woodland caribou disappear from Canada within a human generation, within the next 20 years, just because nobody was willing to step up.”

Ecojustice recently filed a petition with the federal environment minister in relation to several herds in northeastern Alberta, on behalf of First Nations and environmental groups.

“The ball is in the federal government’s court now. Are they willing to let the provinces do nothing?”

Provinces lack endangered species legislation

Part of the problem is that many of Canada’s provinces don’t have their own endangered species legislation.

In 1996, the provinces and the territories and the federal government signed an accord on bringing in legislation to protect endangered species. But 21 years later, Alberta, B.C., Saskatchewan and the Yukon still have no stand-alone legislation (PDF) on endangered species.

In B.C., the NDP government has promised to introduce endangered species legislation this term. In late November, B.C. also announced it had developed a draft agreement with the federal government on what steps will be taken over the next five years to protect the province’s southern mountain caribou — but critics are already warning the plan doesn’t go far enough.

In a letter published in the journal Science in late 2017, researchers Mark Hebblewhite and Daniel Fortin accused governments at all levels of dragging their heels for over a decade while most of Canada’s caribou populations dwindled — largely at the hands of oil and gas and forestry companies.

“If you wait long enough before doing anything, the habitat keeps getting worse, the population keeps declining,” says Fortin.

“The situation becomes so bad that there’s nothing you can do.”

— With files from Jimmy Thomson

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Under the waves of Haro Strait, hydrophones record the noise made by passing vessels and, if you happen to be a whale, the din is already disorienting and disturbing, making it difficult to echo-locate food or communicate with other members of the pod.

“It’s a thunder. Thump, thump, thump, accompanied by squeals and engine noise. It’s like being under the hood of a hot-rod,” said Howard Garrett, president of Orca Network, the Washington State group that tracks the comings and goings of the 80 remaining members of the endangered southern resident killer whales.

All recent studies of the resident pods have identified marine noise around the Strait of Georgia and Juan de Fuca Strait as one of the stressors threatening their survival, in addition to lack of Chinook salmon — the whales’ favourite prey — contaminants accumulating in their blubber and degradation of their critical habitat.

Now, with federal approval of the Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, the situation for the whales is about to get much worse and experts are predicting that the fragile population, which spends about six months a year in the Salish Sea, will not be able to survive the onslaught of tankers.

The number of tankers travelling from the pipeline terminal in Burnaby through Burrard Inlet, around the Gulf Islands and into Juan de Fuca Strait will increase from about five a month to about 34 a month and, while the increased chance of an oil spill is stomach-churning for marine scientists, the damage from increased tanker noise is equally alarming.

“We don’t need to have an oil spill to have significant adverse effects — and no one is disputing that, not the National Energy Board, not Kinder Morgan and not federal scientists,” said Misty MacDuffee, Raincoast Conservation Foundation biologist.

To a whale, it does not matter whether a tanker is empty or laden, meaning the animals will have to deal with a 700 per cent increase, made up of more than 800 inbound and outbound tanker trips every year, MacDuffee said.

Two years ago Raincoast called together top scientists with specialities in endangered populations and acoustics to do an analysis of the viability of the three pods of whales and the conclusion was that the population was on a precipice and could go either way, MacDuffee said.

“They said they cannot endure any more of these stressors.”

The whales are already in the presence of some kind of vessel, ranging from small boats to ferries and tankers, for 85 per cent of the time and, with the additional tankers, they will be in the presence of a vessel 100 per cent of the time, MacDuffee said.

Sound travels four times faster in the water than in the air and it will diminish the ability of the whales to locate their food, which is already in short supply.

“They use echolocation when they are feeding, so they are sending out little clicks and chirps to find individual fish and estimate the size of it and where it is in the water column and then communicate with the pod on how to catch it,” MacDuffee said.

“Our research shows a decrease in efficiency in the presence of vessels, so that translates into less food,” she said.

Insufficient food is believed to have been one of the elements in the latest death among the whales. J28 died in October and it is believed her 10-month-old calf has also died, unable to survive without his mother’s milk to supplement his catch.

“Poor, poor whales. They are just surrounded and bombarded on all sides,” said whale researcher Paul Spong of OrcaLab, a whale research station on Hanson Island, off northern Vancouver Island.

“It’s oil or orcas — take your pick…I think the risks are too great.”

The possibility of a spill is the biggest threat and, as seen in Alaska after the Exxon Valdez spill, that would be disastrous, but noise will also affect their survival, Spong said.

Already, regulations are needed to restrict whale watching vessels and the noise levels of ships, but the government has ignored recommended amendments to marine mammal regulations, Spong said, suggesting one of the first moves should be to severely restrict the speed of vessels travelling through the area.

“The whales are having a difficult time finding food to eat and now, if you shave a little bit more away from them, you are having a big impact on their ability to survive,” he said.

Spong shrugged off a claim by Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc that there would be only a one per cent increase in the noise level and said that was simply an acknowledgement that there would be an impact.

LeBlanc, in an interview with CBC Radio, said initially there might be a one per cent increase in noise, but a critical piece of getting the project right, is to ensure there is no increase in noise.

From Visually.

The whales are under pressure from lack of prey and coming into contact with ships of all sorts, so the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has put together an action plan under the Species at Risk Act, LeBlanc told CBC.

“We’re going to do a lot more to protect that whale population and, in fact, you’ll have a very comprehensive action plan in the new year based on 11,000 public suggestions,” he said.

The NEB found that there would be “significant adverse effects” on the southern resident killer whales from the additional tankers, but, as echoed by the Liberal government, suggested they could be mitigated.

In answer to questions from DeSmog Canada a spokesman for Fisheries and Oceans Canada said DFO recognizes the need to address the cumulative effect of all marine traffic in the area.

Before any shipping from the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project begins, the government will work to reduce impacts on southern resident killer whales in four areas, he said in an emailed statement.

Those include reducing cumulative noise from marine traffic with both voluntary and mandatory strategies, reducing chemical and biological pollutants, improving food supply by restoring coastal salmon habitat and new research to establish baselines.

“The objective is to more than mitigate for the impact of additional Trans Mountain marine traffic before the project begins operations,” the statement reads.

As part of the 157 binding conditions placed on the Kinder Morgan pipeline’s approval, the proponent will be required to develop a marine mammal protection program and support the measures identified in the Southern Resident Killer Whale Action Plan.

Also, the recently-announced $1.5-billion investment in the Oceans Protection Plan will help address the cumulative effects of shipping on marine mammals, according to the statement.

However, MacDuffee said, although ship noise can be reduced, there are currently no requirements to make engines and propellers quiet. She added it would take years to bring in legislation for new ships and to insist older ships are retrofitted.

The fight is likely to continue in the courts as Raincoast and the Living Oceans Society have already applied for a judicial review of the NEB’s report recommending approval of the pipeline expansion, saying the NEB failed to apply the Species At Risk Act.

The organization is now looking at the possibility of a second legal action.

Opponents on both sides of the border are vowing to battle the federal government’s decision and Garrett said there may be lessons from Washington State where the Cherry Point coal export terminal was stopped because of tribal and public opposition and litigation.

Image: NOAA

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Underwater shipping noise in the Salish Sea is likely making it difficult for endangered southern resident killer whales to find food and could threaten their survival, according to a team of U.S. scientists.   A new, two-year study, published in the academic journal Peer J, used underwater microphones to take 3,000 noise measurements as 1,600 individual ships passed through the Washington State side of Haro Strait.   The study site is in the middle of critical habitat for the fish-eating southern resident killer whales and researchers found shipping noise extended to middle and high frequencies used by killer whales to echo-locate prey. Killer whales emit a series of clicking sounds and then listen for the bounce-back echoes in order to find fish.   The researchers found the growth in commercial shipping has raised the intensity of low-frequency noise almost 10-fold since the 1960s and there is growing evidence that it is affecting the communication ability of baleen whales, such as humpbacks, gray whales and right whales.

The paper was authored by Scott Veirs from Beam Reach Marine Science and Sustainability School in Seattle, Val Veirs from Colorado College physics department and Jason Wood of SMRU Consulting in Friday Harbor, Washington.   The question the team set out to answer was whether ship noise extended to higher frequencies used by toothed whales, such as killer whales, and could therefore pose similar threats to them and other marine life such as dolphins and porpoises.   “Because these orcas, like other toothed whales, use mid and high frequencies to communicate and find their prey, the study measured a wide range of frequencies. The results show that ships are responsible for elevated background noise levels, not only at low frequencies, as expected, but also at medium and higher frequencies, including at 20,000 Hz where killer whales hear best,” Scott Veirs said.   “This means that in coastal environments where marine mammals live within a few kilometres of shipping lanes, ship noise has the potential to interfere with both communication and echolocation.”   The study looked at a wide range of ship types and found container ships had the highest median noise levels and military vessels, most of which use noise-suppression technology, had the lowest levels.   “We saw a lot of variability in noise levels, both between and within the 12 classes of ships we studied,” Veirs said in an interview   “That variability suggests that investments in quieting technologies may efficiently lower the median noise levels for many types of ships.”   The researchers also found that, if ships slow down, the noise level is substantially reduced.   “For example, a three knot decrease in speed could cut in half the acoustic power emitted by the ship,” he said.   The three pods of southern resident killer whales, which spend much of their time in the Salish Sea, are the stars of a multi-million dollar ecotourism and whale-watching industry on both sides of the border.   The southern residents eat mainly chinook salmon — unlike transient/Biggs killer whales, which eat marine mammals and offshore populations which rely on a shark diet — and it is essential for their survival that they be able to locate sufficient salmon, which are already in short supply.   Government studies in the U.S. and Canada previously identified noise, pollution and lack of salmon as the main threats facing the southern residents.   The three pods struggled to recover after decades of whaling, followed by captures for marine parks in the 1960s and 1970s and, despite a nine-birth baby boom over the last year, the population stands at only 85 individuals. The first-year survival rate for calves is about 50 per cent.   The study by Veirs and his colleagues is raising questions not only about current noise levels, but what will happen if the dozen oil and coal terminal expansion projects, now proposed for areas around the Salish Sea, get the go-ahead.   The proposals include controversial plans to twin Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline, which would mean a massive increase in oil tankers travelling through the area. It is estimated the number of tankers could increase to about 400 a year from 70 a year.   “The main effect of the proposed development within the Salish Sea may be to further reduce the amount of quiet time our local species enjoy — those periods when ship and boat noise are not part of their environment,” Veirs said.   “Our results confirm that currently about 20 ships a day transit the critical habitat of the southern resident killer whales. Adding just four ships per day would mean that, on average, there would be a ship every hour of the day throughout the year.”

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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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When the Harper government announced deep funding cuts to science programs across the country, the Institute of Ocean Sciences, one of Canada's largest marine institutes located in Sidney, B.C., was among those research outfits hurt as a result. Lead research scientist Peter Ross is one of more than one thousand Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) employees who discovered their position had been terminated.

Peter Ross is no lab coat-wearing, science nerd. At least, not entirely. He’s an oceanic adventurer and Canada’s preeminent orca expert. He discovered things about West Coast orcas that have transformed common marine mammal knowledge around the globe.  

Orcas on the west coast of British Columbia will no longer be monitored for contamination once Peter Ross' research concludes this spring. Come April Canada will no longer have a federal marine contaminants research program anywhere in the nation. Photo credit: Brian Grisborne, used with permission.

When you dismantle science and research programs, says Ross, you are doing much more than limiting your capacity for science and research: you restrict your capacity to engage with your environment, the source of social well-being and a flourishing economy. And you cripple your decision-making capabilities by disregarding the line that separates fact-driven, science-based decision-making from ideology or profit.

And that’s what bothers Ross so much about the Harper government’s recent decision to shutter many of Canada’s prestigious scientific institutions. It’s not simply a matter of budgetary restraint or the restructuring of federal bodies. It limits science pursued in the public interest.

This is part 1 of an interview with Peter Ross. Part 2 available here.

Carol Linnitt: Hello, Peter. So, let me jump right in. The reason I’m calling is because I’d like to talk to you about the cancelled funding for the Institute of Ocean Sciences.

Peter Ross: Yes, so the Institute will still be open, it's a large Institute, but the marine contaminants program has been axed.

CL: And has that already happened?

[view:in_this_series=block_1]

PR: We're still here, but we're winding down, so, in effect, probably by the springtime we'll be shut down.

CL: And how many employees will that be? I know that you’re heralded as Canada’s only marine mammal toxicologist, but is there a team that you work with?

PR: Yes, there are 55 full time staff nationally that consist of scientists, technicians and chemists, and they’re scattered across the country. There’s nine of us here in Sidney, B.C., probably the same number in Winnipeg for the Arctic, and then a number in Rimouski, Quebec, and a few in a couple of spots in the Maritimes.

CL: And so by the time the spring hits, all of those . . .

PR: Will be gone. Probably one quarter are already gone.

CL: So what happens when these positions get cut? Are scientists fired? Are they moved into new positions?

PR: That will vary. Essentially you get a letter saying that your services are no longer required, and you have three choices. One is to resign, and you've got 120 days to do so. Another is to take educational leave, which gives you two years of leave without pay, to go to school again and retrain, and then you can come back and re-apply for a new position. The third is you can apply for a position that may be open in the government right now. But you would have to work on something other than what you trained for.

CL: And what positions are coming open right now?

PR: Well there's a fair bit of downsizing in the government right now, so there aren’t a lot of jobs coming open. And for some, like myself, who are trained as research scientists, there are really no jobs coming open. I've been told that my expertise is not wanted within the government. So that’s sort of a mixed answer. I think some of the technical staff will be more likely to find success regaining employment within government because they’re a bit more versatile in terms of training. But for someone like me, no, there’s very little hope that there will be any position for me, unless I want to go into management.

CL: What’s the difference between a technician and a research scientist?

PR: Training. A research scientist has a Ph.D., and within the government your job is to do ground breaking research, which you publish in international journals. You become the government’s expert in that field, so you are appraised every year in terms of your performance, And your performance is based on the number of publications you appear in and their impact on public policy. A technician may be someone working in a laboratory or in the field, but in a supporting role for a research program, led by the research scientist.

CL: Does that mean that if there’s an overall reduction in research positions, Canada is taking a step back as a country within the international scientific community?

PR: Well, you know science is a funny thing, and it’s often hard to do justice in defining it or describing it to a lay-audience. I think science is different things to different people. When I look at the kind of research that I do, I work for the government. I work for the Crown. I work for the taxpayer. I work on projects for which I have to raise and attract money. These are projects that ultimately help us to manage and protect our oceans. So when I look at the work that I am interested in getting involved in, or that I’ve attracted funds to support. I’m ultimately asking, ‘Does it help me to better understand the ocean? Will it empower us to manage or protect our ocean resources?’

If I were at a university I might do similar research, but I’m less likely to be wed to the idea that I have to protect Canada or Canadian natural resources. Or that I have to work within the confines of a mission, a mandate, and legislative framework such as the Oceans Act, Species at Risk Act or Fisheries Act. So the way I go about science will be similar to an academic, but the context and the implications of my work will differ quite a bit, because I am on the hook and responsible for a certain file. If it emerges as an issue in Canada, if there is a public outcry about a certain chemical, process or industry, and the minister’s office calls down for advice from us, or need answers fast, I would be one of those people that would have to jump. If I was at university, I wouldn’t be compelled to do the same

CL: So your position is where the scientific rubber meets the policy road?

PR: I think so, yes. Ultimately, the government isn’t in the position of just spending money on research and development for the sake of spending money on science and knowledge. It likes to know what kind of research gets done and that it will improve the government’s ability to protect Canadians, wildlife, natural resources, Canadian sovereignty, all of those things. And that would be different for a faculty member at a university. They might have such aims, but they are not required to think in those terms.

CL: I see. I was speaking with Andrew Weaver from the university of Victoria recently, and he broke the nature of science production into three categories: industry-funded science, academic curiosity-driven science, and government taxpayer-funded science in the interest of the public good. He said that if we’re seeing reductions in science being pursued for the public good, then science really gets left to industry and the academy, and neither of those have the same obligation to the public and to taxpayers.

PR: Well that’s right. Industry is not going to say, “I want to look at all ninety thousand chemicals on the Canadian market, and every problem in the ocean.”  What industrial sector is going to pick up that file? None. What industry can be very good at is monitoring certain effluents, or a pipe that’s discharging contaminants within a certain sector – something that’s really focused on a certain activity. Otherwise why would they pay for it? They’re only going to pay for the kind of monitoring or research that has a direct bearing on the performance of their specific economic sector.

That’s where government science is very different. I am, for example, looking at marine mammals and marine mammals aren’t being contaminated because of a single sector. They are getting contaminated because of thousands of different sources of thousands of different chemicals in Canada, the United States, and internationally. And so, all these chemicals are essentially accidents or mistakes or processes that are leading to contamination of the ocean, and some of these chemicals build up in food webs and mammals.

Someone like me comes along and says, “Okay, that’s what I’m finding, now what does that mean? Is it affecting the health of the population? And if so, where is this chemical or that chemical, or that other chemical coming from? Is it banned in Canada? Is it used as a pesticide in agriculture? Has it come from pulp mills? Does it come from sewage effluents?” And then we track these things down and work with regulators in Ottawa and Washington, D.C. We would also potentially work with the industry that is producing the compound, or releasing it. We work with regional governments, and the province. So ultimately, what we try to do within government is that kind of 'ecosystem' approach to science, or habitat-based approach to science. That approach would be of little interest to an industrial sector. It’s highly focused.

CL: So if we’re talking about something like research into contaminants in marine species, and we see a large reduction in research scientist positions, what will happen? Does it get dropped? Does it mean that we’ll no longer be studying this issue?

PR: That’s correct.

CL: So, no one is studying the contamination of marine environments and mammals once you close up?

PR: Well it’s up to whomever to do whatever they want right now. There is no leadership, there’s no guidance, there’s no instruction, there’s no requirement. The only thing that’s going to make somebody interested in working on this is going to be money. Who’s going provide the money?  This kind of work is very expensive. You can’t go out in the ocean and understand what’s going on without access to boats, expensive sampling gear and partners in multiple sectors to help you understand all the other processes that are important from the perspective of pollution. This applies whether it's ocean currents, ocean productivity, or the life history of different species or food web structures.

The lab work is very expensive. We have two lines of research that we have been applying routinely in our study designs. One is, what are the health implications of the chemicals to which they're exposed? That’s toxicology. That’s looking at the health of salmon, the health of seals, the health of killer whales, and it is very difficult, very expensive work. The other involves what chemicals they are exposed to. That’s chemistry. We have to get samples from animals, measure those chemicals, and it can cost two thousand dollars to measure a single sample. So if we eliminate these programs, the work is going to be left up to people other than government, which means universities or industry. Somebody might do something, but are they going to be compelled to be responsible for everything? No.

CL: It’s not just your outfit that’s had its funding cut and positions lost. This is happening all across Canada, with similar research. What is the significance of that for Canada?

PR: Well I think that it’s easy to ignore research and science when one is operating in the mainstream of Canadian public life or society.  We often don’t see the immediate benefits or applications of science. I think we forget that the well being of our human population, our quality of life, is largely dependent on a healthy environment. And I think we often forget that it’s scientific research that has led us to discover and uncover a lot of that wealth and to harness it. But we ignore it when that same science also identifies limits to our wealth generation, development, or ways in which we can channel development so that it’s constructive and not negatively impacting aspects of society or the economy.

I think we often forget the inherent and intrinsic value of science and how it does, and has, contributed to the Canada we know today. If we start to ignore scientists and the expertise within the Canadian scientific establishment, we will be losing the ability to manage our future success, the ability to understand threats to the Canadian way and the ability to adapt and grow. We will, I think, lose a little bit of control over our future. It’s by having our finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the ocean, the freshwater environment or terrestrial habitats that allows us to provide advice that will help us manage those things and to maintain vibrant economies associated with the coastal waters, the oceans, freshwater ecosystems, or terrestrial environments. So I think it’s diminishing our ability to adapt, to manage, to predict, and to maintain the investment that we have in the Canadian way of life.

Read Part 2 of Retreat from Science.

Cover Image Credit: Lizzy Moss, used with permission.

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.