The results of a UBC study published in the peer-reviewed medical journal Environmental Health in January 2020 suggest air pollution and living close to major roads is connected to a higher risk of Parkinson’s disease and dementia.

“We wanted to understand who develops these neurologic diseases and who does not,” Dr. Michael Brauer, professor in the University of British Columbia’s School of Population and Public Health and one of the study’s authors, told The Narwhal. 

“We wanted to know, if you live close to a major road, were you more likely to develop a disease than somebody who did not live close to a major road?”

The study analyzed data for 678,000 individuals ages 45 to 84 living in Metro Vancouver between 1994 and 2003. As well as administrative health data, each individual’s proximity to a major road, exposure to air pollution, exposure to traffic noise and proximity to green space was analyzed based on their postal codes.

Why consider the population’s neurological health?

This study focused on four neurological disorders: Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis (MS), Alzheimer’s disease and non-Alzheimer’s dementia. All of them are progressive diseases, meaning symptoms will gradually worsen over time.

Neurological diseases, including the four studied, are one of the leading causes of disability in Canada. None of the four disorders have a known cure and cost Canada’s health care system billions.

Brauer said that little is known about why some individuals develop these disorders and others don’t — particularly beyond aging, a known risk factor. Understanding the role the environment and urban design play could result in preventative measures being taken, and in turn, savings in health spending.

A connection to fine particulate matter

Medical data like physician codes, hospitalization data, medical billing data and prescription drug information was analyzed to determine if individuals who did not have neurological disorders between 1994 and 1998 then developed Parkinson’s disease, MS, Alzheimer’s disease or dementia in the years between 1999 and 2003.

Results showed that living less than 50 metres from a major road or less than 150 metres from a highway was associated with a 14 per cent increased risk for non-Alzheimer’s dementia and a seven per cent increased risk for Parkinson’s disease. 

Brauer notes that the number of Alzheimer’s disease and MS cases was low, meaning a relationship between road proximity, air pollution and these neurologic disorders can’t be made.

The hypothesis is that the increased risk for cognitive disorders based on road proximity has to do, at least in part, with a connection to fine particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide and nitric oxide in the air.

A tree in Vancouver’s 617-acre Lynn Canyon Park. The UBC study found proximity to green spaces has protected effects for neurological health. Photo: Andy Li

‘Green spaces protect you against its effects’

However, the results found proximity to green spaces — street trees and parks — has protective effects, even if there is still air pollution and if the individual lived near a major road.

“Even though people were [neurologically] affected by air pollution, they were less affected if where they lived was greener,” Brauer said.  

Brauer said the findings show we should be thinking about incorporating greenery and parks into residential neighbourhoods, as well as relying less on motor vehicles and separating motor vehicles from where people are spending time, to benefit Canadians’ neurological health.

However, more research still needs to be done. Next, Brauer and his team plan to expand this study beyond Metro Vancouver.

“[Analyzing] a larger population will also allow us to look at more combinations of noise, air pollution, road proximity and green space,” Brauer said. “And perhaps [we can] untangle a little bit more about what’s going on with regard to the aging population’s neurological health.” 

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Resolute, Nunavut, is nearly 3,000 km directly north of Winnipeg. It’s a tiny hamlet of fewer than 200 people, nestled into the tundra of Cornwallis Island on the northern side of Lancaster Sound. It is, in other words, a long way from the busy cities and shipping corridors more commonly associated with plastic pollution.

And yet.

The evidence is starting to stack up that not only is plastic finding its way to the Arctic, but that it’s already present throughout the environment — in the water, on the beaches and in the sediment on the ocean floor. It’s being found inside the birds, the fish, the mammals and the invertebrates alike. And its long-term consequences for everything from ecosystem-wide food webs down to individual health are yet unknown.

An ongoing research program in partnership with the Inuit hamlet of Resolute and three other Arctic communities is finding plastic even there, building up in the stomachs and colonies of northern fulmars.

The program has found that 80 to 85 per cent of northern fulmars in the Arctic have plastic in their bodies.

“We can actually feel it often before we open up the stomach,” says lead researcher Jennifer Provencher, a post-doctoral fellow at Acadia University. “It’s very visible.”

The birds eat pieces of plastic, usually under a millimetre in size, as they scoop up prey from the surface of the ocean.

Many of the bits get stuck in the stomach and accumulate there.

“We can actually feel it often before we open up the stomach.” —Jennifer Provencher

“We know the birds are absorbing it,” Provencher says; chemicals are leaching from the plastic into the fulmars’ bodies.

The consequences of that absorption on the birds’ health are still uncertain, but some chemicals in plastics can disrupt hormones or even be passed down to the next generation through the eggs.

Not all the plastic stays in the birds, though. Plastic pieces and fibres may also be deposited through feces back in the colony, potentially contaminating the land and water nearby.

“What’s really interesting is that when you have these birds that are colonial — can be tens of thousands of individuals — if they’re all pooping in one place, what does that mean for microplastics around the colony?” Provencher asks.

“Are the birds making a kind of halo of microplastics around the colonies?”

Her research team is now partnering with Inuit communities to answer that question. Hunters and other community members are going out and taking water samples, as well as collecting shellfish and birds to measure the amount of microplastics the birds are bringing home with them.

Plastic in the Arctic

All of this plastic probably isn’t originating in the Arctic; there just isn’t the population density or industrial activity.

A new paper published in Nature Communications couldn’t pin down the actual origin of the plastics, but suggested much of it could be coming from “the relatively highly [microplastics]-contaminated offshore North Atlantic waters.” Troublingly, it also found that sea ice itself is a repository for the contaminants, much of which will be released as the ice melts.

That result was backed up by a study of sea-floor sediments in the High Arctic — the further north the researchers looked, the more microplastics they found on the bottom of the ocean. That’s reflected on the land, too. On beaches in Svalbard, an archipelago halfway between the northern tip of Norway and the North Pole, citizen scientists collected nearly 1,000 kilograms of litter — as much as half a kilo per square meter on some beaches — largely related to fisheries.

Provencher is also looking at the possibility that the birds themselves are bringing plastics back to the Arctic with them after they return from their wintering grounds in the North Atlantic.

They aren’t the only species in the Arctic suffering from the influx of man-made material. There’s a growing body of evidence that invertebrates, fish, mammals and even humans are accumulating plastics in their bodies.

A study published in 2017 found a small number of young polar cod, one of the keystone species in Arctic ecosystems, had bits of plastic in their stomachs.

“With increasing human activity, plastic ingestion may act as an increasing stressor on polar cod in combination with ocean warming and sea-ice decline,” the authors wrote.

Students at Nunavut Arctic College dissect a bird. Inuit students are important contributors to Provencher’s research. Photo: Jennifer Provencher.

That’s especially worrying because polar cod are connected to many of the other species in the Arctic: they’re eaten by birds, seals, beluga whales and other fish; those species, in turn, can end up as food for polar bears and orcas. The plastics or their toxic ingredients could thus be found even in species that don’t eat them directly — including humans.

“Globally, microplastics have been documented in over 700 species,” says researcher Rhiannon Moore. That includes species all the way up to sperm whales, like the young whale that washed up in Spain in February with 29 kilograms of plastic in its stomach and an associated abdominal infection.

Through the Ocean Wise program at the Vancouver Aquarium, Moore is studying plastic accumulation in beluga whale food webs in the western Canadian Arctic. It’s a relatively pristine and, in terms of ocean currents, isolated area she says is “a pretty big unknown” in terms of the effects and concentration of plastics.

That goes for much of the Canadian coastline, the longest in the world. Canada does not have a national microplastics research program; Provencher’s fulmar study is working from the longest-running dataset in the country.

Her work has found that Canada’s oceans are actually — on a global scale — relatively clean in terms of plastic pollution. Despite the vast majority of fulmars having some plastic in their bodies, the numbers were only slightly worse than the North Atlantic standard for a healthy population.

In Europe, populations are faring much worse.

Provencher says her results show the standard is actually achievable. It shows that, with less plastic in the water, the fulmars eat less and accumulate less.

Simply put, it provides hope.

‘More complex than just plastic straws’

Trying to find out when studies of plastic pollution in the Arctic began is an exercise in cultural archaeology. A search through the published studies prior to the 1970s mostly brings up results in which researchers are figuring out more ways to put plastic to use in the Arctic, and how to make it work better there.

In the first years of that decade, though scientists’ attention shifted, after seaweed researchers Edward Carpenter and Kenneth Smith started pulling in nets full of bits of plastic in the Sargasso Sea.

“The occurrence of these particles have not yet been noted in the literature,” they mused in a paper published in the journal Science in 1972. “The increasing production of plastics, combined with present waste-disposal practices, will probably lead to greater concentrations on the sea surface.”

They weren’t wrong. At the time, Carpenter and Smith were finding 3,500 plastic particles per square kilometer. A study in 2010 in the same stretch of water found the concentration has shot up to 580,000 pieces per square kilometer — nearly 200 times as much.

Just a couple of years after that first article was published, in 1974, a review of the literature was already talking about the increasing problem even in remote Arctic areas like Alaska.

The field is now booming as the public and governments reckon with the consequences of the enthusiasm with which the world has embraced persistent, synthetic materials and sent them forth into the world for more than half a century.

Rhiannon Moore sifts through sand on an Alaska beach, searching for plastic that has been washing up there for decades. Photo courtesy Rhiannon Moore.

Moore is passionate about avoiding plastic in her own life; in 2017 she raised money to join the eXXpedition, an all-female sailing journey to document ocean plastic pollution.

She says the issue reached the public conscience as the consequences of microbeads in cosmetics reached the mainstream: people could actually see the pollution they were producing literally going down the drain and out into the world.

“People could say, woah, this was a really stupid idea, we’re really using plastic irresponsibly,” she says.

But the issue is bigger than microbeads or any other single product. Plastic is everywhere in our lives, from packaging to clothing, toys, tools, electronics and more. There have been grassroots efforts to avoid, limit or ban plastics in multiple industries, and zero-waste lifestyles are gaining traction. A zero-waste grocery store is set to open in Vancouver in the coming weeks.

Attention has focused lately on single-use plastics like straws, but that has its limits.

“It’s great that people are passionate about it, but this is a lot more complex than just plastic straws,” says Moore. “We are not going to solve this just by banning plastic straws.”

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The continuous flow of dangerous pollution from B.C.’s Elk Valley coal mines into a Montana watershed is a top discussion item for Canadian and U.S. delegates convening at a bilateral meeting in Washington, D.C., Thursday.

Selenium from five metallurgical coal mines owned and operated by Teck Resources has been leaching into B.C.’s Elk River and flowing southeast into Montana’s Kootenai River watershed for decades. Contamination levels measured in U.S. waters exceeds maximum concentration limits outlined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Selenium is released from waste rock piled at Teck’s large-scale open-pit coal mines, where rainfall and snowmelt draw it into the Elk and Fording Rivers. Selenium can be harmful to biological organisms at even small amounts and causes deformities in fish and birds.

Michael Jamison, program manager with the National Park Conservation Association’s Glacier Field Office in Montana, said it’s a good sign the pollution of the transboundary watershed is on the bilateral agenda.

“People have been discussing the transboundary water issue between B.C. and Montana as a potential agenda item for the bilaterals for over a decade,” Jamison told DeSmog Canada. “They’re finally there.”

The decades-old problem of contamination received new attention from top U.S. officials, including former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who vowed to put pressure on his Canadian counterparts to address the ongoing pollution problem.

Montana Senator Jon Tester has been raising the profile of the issue for years, saying the Kootenai watershed, which is a popular spot for recreational fishing and outdoor activity, is threatened by B.C.’s pollution.

Tester pushed for the Kootenai to be included in the recent U.S. government-spending bill, signed by President Donald Trump, which lists reducing the pollution flowing into the watershed as a budget priority.

“It seems like there’s some traction here that we’ve been missing for some time,” Jamison said.

“But this is what baffles me — it’s bad enough that us in Montana, the U.S. State Department and tribes on this side of the border are prioritizing it. But it must be so much worse farther north.”

“I guess I don’t understand how B.C. puts up with that.”

Teck was the single largest donor to the BC Liberal party, which governed B.C. for 16 years until last year. Between 2008 and 2017, the company gave $1.5 million to the BC Liberals. The company also donated $60,000 to the B.C. NDP in that same period.

Teck’s ongoing selenium nightmare

The reality of Teck’s selenium problems have unfolded over the last decade as the company has tried — unsuccessfully — to introduce an effective water treatment facility.

In October 2017 Teck pled guilty to three violations of the federal Fisheries Act for its pollution of the Elk River and was fined $1.4 million for a 2014 fish kill near the company’s Line Creek wastewater treatment plant.

The $600 million water treatment plant had only been in operation for four months when the fish kill — which included local bull trout, a species of special concern — occurred.

An expert report prepared for Environment Canada in 2014 found selenium poisoning caused spinal, head and skull deformities, missing fins and disfigured gill plates in fish eggs brought to laboratories to be hatched.

“As these surface mines have expanded, so has the volume of their selenium-laden water discharges to nearby stream and rivers,” Dr. Dennis Lemly, research associate professor at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, wrote in his report.

Lemly warned the Elk River watershed was at a tipping point and that further increases in selenium concentrations could lead to a “total population collapse of sensitive species such as westslope cutthroat trout.”

Erin Sexton, senior scientist with the University of Montana’s Flathead Lake Biological Station told DeSmog Canada that B.C. has granted permits for Elk Valley mines that allow for selenium levels ranging from 70 micrograms per litre to 19 micrograms per litre while the provincial criteria for protection of aquatic life is 2 micrograms per litre.

U.S. EPA regulations limit acceptable selenium pollution levels to 1.5 micrograms per litre.

Jamison said the rules don’t seem to apply to Teck’s mining operations in B.C. even after the company has been found to be in violation of provincial regulations.

“The regulators up north said, ‘nah that’s cool. As long as you promise you can fix it, you get your permit,’ ” he said.

“Whereas down here we have different methods to review, permit, monitor and regulate mines. And there’s not a lot of wiggle in it.”

“The lines seem to be drawn in ink on the U.S. side, and in pencil on the Canadian side.”

In the fall of 2017 Teck shut down the Line Creek water treatment plant after it found the facility was releasing a more bioavailable and thus more toxic form of selenium into the region’s waterways. Teck has since notified the B.C. government the treatment plant will be offline until 2018.

“Teck has invested millions in multiple treatment technologies, and at least twice they have shut down their one and only treatment plant, due to impacts to fish,” Sexton told DeSmog Canada.

“First for a fish kill, and now for a technology ‘error’ resulting in bio-concentration of selenium in the wastewater — the exact opposite intent of the treatment.”

Sexton, who has studied transboundary water quality for the last decade, said Teck and the B.C. government have not been forthcoming with their data on these issues.

“Frankly, we collected our own data in the Elk River system — the Flathead Lake Biological Station collected data for water quality and bugs — and Montana Fish and Game collected data for fish — because of the lack of data availability, transparency, and scientific objectivity that has characterized this issue for over a decade,” she said.

B.C. Minister of Environment George Heyman was unable to provide comment by time of publication.

“The lines seem to be drawn in ink on the U.S. side, and in pencil on the Canadian side.” https://t.co/f5UhxC79WC

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 26, 2018

Mine permits issued despite Teck’s prolonged pollution problems

Dave Hadden, executive director of Headwaters Montana, said he’s pleased to see the Kootenai listed on the bilateral agenda, but is concerned neither short-term nor long-term solutions are clearly at hand.

“This is a multi-century problem,” Hadden told DeSmog Canada. “The problem is not going to go away and there needs to be a mechanism that finds a solution for addressing a multi-century problem that is fair to Canada, fair to the U.S. and that provides mitigation for these impacts.”

Headwaters Montana is one of a coalition of groups asking B.C. follow international water quality standards before new Elk Valley coal mines are approved.

Lars Sander-Green from B.C. conservation group Wildsight said B.C. actively grants permits and approvals to Teck that not only maintain operations but allow for expansion.

“It’s more than just up and running. In order to continue mining and exporting coal they continue to expand their footprint, which means expanding their waste rock piles and the selenium problem,” he told DeSmog Canada.

A 2016 report from B.C. auditor general Carol Bellringer found it concerning that permits were granted to Teck Resources to expand its Line Creek Mine after staff at the Ministry of Environment found an expansion of the mine would exacerbate selenium pollution problems.

At the time, the BC Liberals granted a permit for the expansion invoking — for the first time in B.C. history — section 137 of the Environmental Management Act, which allows government to introduce waste into the environment if deemed in the public interest.

“Perhaps we should be looking at a temporary moratorium, additional fines or compensatory mitigation with biological offsets in other areas given the legacy of impacts they have created in the Elk,” Sexton said.

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Lighthouse Beach, a white sand crescent on the north coast of Nova Scotia, was once considered the jewel of the region. People would flock there from New Glasgow and Pictou on summer weekends, visiting the lobster bar and swimming in the clear waters of the Northumberland Strait.

There had been plans for a twice-daily train that would carry visitors between the seaside, a hotel and a local yacht club. Dreams began of a destination national park. But all of these plans were choked off by the introduction of a giant pulp and paper mill in 1967 that literally transformed a large part of Pictou Landing into a toxic dump.

You can smell it usually before you can see it: clouds of sulphur belching from the Abercrombie Point Pulp and Paper Mill smokestacks. For decades, the plant pumped contaminated water into the strait, using Boat Harbour, once an idyllic tidal lagoon used for fishing and clam digging, as a settling pond for highly toxic effluent.

It was also once my family’s home.

My family settled over 200 years ago in this piece of Mi’kmaq First Nation territory, eventually transferring their own property into government care for — as they were told — protection for future generations.

Waves now roll in on Lighthouse Beach dark brown and foamy, the colour of Guinness, where I — like so many other kids in the area — learned to swim and sail.

Photo credit: Dr. Gerry Farrell

The story of Pictou Landing is one of desperation, of corruption and incompetence. So perhaps it’s no surprise that when Canadian journalist and anthropologist Joan Baxter tried to tell it, old forces of power moved in to silence her. The mill’s owners tried to banish Baxter and her book The Mill: Fifty Years of Pulp and Protest from local bookstores.

Of course, that backfired in spectacular fashion: The Mill sold out two printings and became the best-selling book in Nova Scotia Chapters and Coles book stores the month it was released.

I reached Baxter at her home in Nova Scotia to talk about The Mill, the stories that were told to hide industry’s impacts from locals and the fight against years of environmental racism and degradation still plaguing the region to this day.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell me about the environmental situation around the mill and Boat Harbour.

Back in the mid ’60s when the provincial government of Nova Scotia was desperate to try to find some industry in Pictou County, which was really hurting, they were wooing big industries.

In 1964, just before Christmas, [Premier Robert] Stanfield announced that Scott Paper was going to move into Pictou County. Of course, the pulp mill was moving in but nobody really talked about where the effluent was going to go.

The province, in its desperation to lure this big foreign corporation, did something that’s never, to my knowledge, been done before.

The province agreed to take care of the effluent from that mill. So we would own the effluent. We would give them really cheap fresh water, we even built a dam to give them over 90 million litres of water a day from the river, then we would take care of the effluent that came out, which was almost the same amount of really toxic effluent.

But they needed a place to put it. It’s probably criminal, I’m guessing: they lied to the local population, and certainly lied to the Pictou Landing First Nation, and said that they wouldn’t be able to fish anymore in this estuary called Boat Harbour — or, A’se’k, by the Mi’kmaq, which means “the other room.” But basically they’d still be able to boat and use it for recreation and there wouldn’t be a problem with the water.

Two people from the water authority, whose job it was to get the First Nation to sign off on this body of water, Boat Harbour, they took the chief up to New Brunswick. They showed them a non-functioning treatment centre that wasn’t even working and said, “This is what your water will look like; it’ll be perfectly clear.” So they tricked everybody.

Families, like your own, had an inkling that this wasn’t going to be the case. Even before the mill opened, in 1967, there were already people protesting what would happen to Boat Harbour because they knew when they closed it off and turned it into a receptacle for the vast amounts of toxic waste that was coming out of the mill that it would completely destroy the environment — which it did.

It turned it into one of Canada’s most egregious environmental disasters, right at the backdoor of the Pictou Landing First Nation. It completely destroyed what was an extremely important body of water for them. And it destroyed all of the beaches, Lighthouse Beach, and certainly your family and the people who had cottages and homes in Moodie Cove, all of that was destroyed. Lighthouse Beach was destroyed; it became a no-go area once the effluent began to flow.

Then there was a massive pipeline break. The effluent from the mill goes under Pictou Harbour then comes back up onto land, then it goes overland a little ways before it goes out into Boat Harbour. Forty-seven million litres… were spilled onto sacred Mi’kmaq land, at a site called Indian Point.

At that point the Pictou Landing First Nation said, enough is enough, and got the government to pass legislation, which they did in 2015: that Boat Harbour has to close in 2020, be remediated, and the effluent treatment has to be done differently, and be done somewhere else.

Already the bill for that, which of course the public purse in Nova Scotia will be covering, is $133 million and may go much higher.

The problem is the alternative plan is to … ship it directly out in a one-meter diameter pipe into the Northumberland Strait, just at the mouth of Pictou Harbour, into one of the most lucrative lobster fishing areas possibly in the province. That has the fishermen absolutely up in arms.

It’s been a travesty since day one. What the government gave away to that corporation in the 1960s, every successive government has just dug the hole deeper and made us responsible for more and more of the problems. The indemnity agreement that was signed in 1995 means that the people of Nova Scotia are also responsible for any new treatment plant that they make.

Photo credit: Dr. Gerry Farrell

The announcement of the mill was reported as being “hailed jubilantly from all parts of the county,” when in reality there was already significant opposition. What role did the media play in allowing this to happen and flourish? How has that role changed?

The Chronicle Herald did a series of four articles last week in which they said they were going to bring some facts in black and white about the mill, and how it worked, and what a benefit it was, but also talk to people who have concerns about the mill. Of those four articles, which was upwards of 4,000 words, I counted 56 or 57 that even alluded to the fact that there are fishermen and people concerned about the new plans for the effluent.

The University of King’s College, the report they did in 2009 about Boat Harbour I think is one of the landmark pieces of journalism in this province, ever. It took the lid off a really, really dirty secret that most people in Nova Scotia had no idea about. It’s a really remarkable piece of journalism.

Each generation comes and goes, and those stories get buried. You realize that history’s been repeating itself for 50 years. The people, the citizens, they rise up, they complain, they protest, they write letters, they get organized, they expend enormous amounts of time and energy and emotion — and get foiled by one government after another.

And then you hear the same promises coming out of the mill…Then you realize they’ve said that over and over again. It’s only when you put those years of media coverage together that you realize that the situation just keeps perpetuating itself.

Activism has been very hard on the citizens over the years, but they have made baby steps, and if they had not done all that research and passed it on to me, it would have taken me years to write this book.

Why did you decide to focus on the environmental activism around the mill?

Because that’s the biggest story about the mill. That is the story. What happened when I started to do research was I started to uncover all these previous waves of activism, going back to the very beginning.

There have been some fairly muted criticisms…that I didn’t bring the voices of the workers. The head of the union simply didn’t answer my calls. I went to his boss, I went to the UNIFOR communications person, they simply didn’t answer my correspondence.

I have had private messages since the book came out from people telling me there is a climate of fear within the mill. That the workers are either being told a pack of lies or that they’re being told to keep their mouths shut.

When this book was published, the mill tried to suppress it. What did that look like, and what effect did it have?

I was on my way to Halifax to do an interview on CTV about the book, when I got a call from Chapters telling me they had cancelled the book signing in New Glasgow.

I was never told exactly what the problem was, except that somebody had said they would destroy the book in front of me. They were worried about a disruption, the bookstore staff were feeling really insecure. They didn’t want anything ugly happening.

Because it had already been promoted and advertised on social media a lot of people went to the store looking for me to sign books, and of course I wasn’t there, and they were told it was cancelled, and social media took over.

It wasn’t until Tuesday that somebody managed to get a copy of the form letter that had been going out from Kathy Cloutier at the mill to former employees and employees, which they were to sign, threatening to boycott Coles and Indigo stores across the country if they allowed me to sign my book in New Glasgow.

That made it a bigger story, because people could see that it had been orchestrated, it had come from the mill.

We had had a very small first printing, because it was a small publisher with very little money. That printing sold out really quickly, and then a second one, and now we’re on the third one. It was the best-selling book in Coles and Chapters in Nova Scotia in December.

It’s just journalism. But the fact that it seems to have made such a splash makes me think that there’s a lot more room in Nova Scotia and in Canada for long-form journalism about some of the industries that we subsidize.

How do corporations have so much influence on Nova Scotia’s environmental policies?

Nova Scotia has some of the weakest environmental legislation of any place I’ve ever lived. We don’t have a clean air act.

Each one of the big industries in Nova Scotia negotiates its own industrial approval with its own specific emissions targets and so on. There’s no overall act that really looks after us.

It’s those jobs. Pictou County is hurting. They don’t have any of the former industries that they had. They’re really terrified. Nobody’s willing to pull the plug.

Each government just kicks it down the road to its successor. Nobody wants to be the one who is responsible for it.

It would take a government with vision and with courage to do what’s right and really play hardball — and say, ‘If you can’t clean this up and change the way you operate, then you have to close down.’

You call the mill’s owners “absentee corporate landlords” — why does it make a difference where the owners are based?

The Sinar Mas Group is so huge, it’s everywhere. They’re in China, they’re elsewhere in Asia. It’s a massive, massive corporate group. This is just a tiny little minnow in the ocean of their companies.

Honestly, do they care about it? Maybe they do, because they’re never going to get a better deal somewhere else.

Where are they going to get that much water that cheaply? Where are they going to be able to operate where they’ll be able to fail their emissions test and be fined less than $700? Where are they going to get access to Crown land at the low stumpage rates they get in Nova Scotia? I don’t know.

They’re bullies. And I think they’ve bullied their way for 50 years to get what they want. Anybody who tries to stop a book signing, then cancels a Christmas party at Pictou Lodge because the manager had the audacity to suggest it might hurt tourism having their effluent dumped right in front of his establishment — that’s bullying.

I think it’s a worldwide phenomenon, but I think it’s particularly bad in Nova Scotia. Our politicians get stars in their eyes when these great big guys come to our province because they take it as a sign that we’re a really good place to invest. No, we’re a place where you can take advantage of us.

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The federal government recently created two marine protected areas in the Pacific region and has committed to increase ocean protection from one per cent to 10 by 2020. But will this be enough?

Canada has the longest coastline of any nation, but our country doesn’t end at its ocean shores. With a 200-nautical-mile economic zone and international obligations, Canada is responsible for almost three million square kilometres of ocean, an area roughly the size of British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba combined.

Although that’s a big area, thinking of the ocean in square kilometres is just skimming the surface. The ocean isn’t just a cold, wet seascape blanketed by howling winds. Below the surface, life thrives throughout the water column, top to bottom, warm or cold, winter or summer.

Northern aquatic food webs are rich with creatures of all shapes and sizes, from tiny plankton, urchins and sea stars to fish, orcas and sea lions. That the world’s largest living creature ever, the blue whale, feeds on some of the smallest, plankton, is astonishing in itself. Yet the plankton thread in the food web doesn’t end in the whale’s stomach; whale poop is also a critical part of the marine food web, cycling nutrients from the surface to creatures at the bottom.

The way otters keep kelp forests healthy by eating sea urchins is one of myriad interconnected relationships in Canadian coastal waters. Although barnacles and clams live in a single location, some whales and fish travel thousands of kilometres within a single season. Salmon don’t even have the ocean as a boundary, swimming far inland to spawn.

How can we understand and manage such complex systems? Natural cycles in Canada’s coastal waters include currents, tides, upwellings, migrations and seasons. Trying to predict how multiple factors like pollution, industrial fishing, climate change, ocean acidification, glass sponge reefs, ships, rights and title claims, kayakers, recreational fishing lodges and renewable energy sites will interact with these cycles is becoming increasingly more complicated, and important, than ever. With all these uncertainties and complexities, how can we know if marine protected areas are effective?

To understand how creating a refuge works, let’s go back to a simple 1936 study of an “ecosystem.” It was a test tube with two microscopic single cell species, prey and predator. In that oversimplified ecosystem, the predatory species ate the prey, and then died because, without prey, they could not survive.

Putting material in the test tube so the prey could hide and multiply changed everything, creating a variety of unpredictable outcomes. However, one pattern emerged: It was far more likely that both prey and predator would survive.

Canada Has the Longest Coastline in the World. Guess How Much is Protected? https://t.co/OfKiHFvPun #bcpoli #cdnpoli #bcelxn17 #YVR #YYJ

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) April 10, 2017

Expanding the concept to marine protected areas, this simple experiment bodes well for one top predator (humans) and prey (fish). Even though science can’t predict whether protected areas will help specific stocks increase, evidence suggests they show promise as “nurseries” for fish and other ocean wildlife and can provide a buffer against our lack of understanding.

Canada’s two new Pacific marine protected areas shield magnificent, fragile glass sponge reefs near Haida Gwaii and important seabird nesting sites on the Scott Islands. Safeguards are in place to protect the glass sponge reefs and the countless species that use them for refuge. However, current protections for the area surrounding the Scott Islands are too vague to reduce threats to the millions of seabirds that depend on the forage area to breed and feed.

The federal government deserves credit for beginning to develop a network of marine protected areas. They’re an essential part of keeping ocean ecosystems healthy, but they must have meaningful safeguards. Protected areas are just one aspect of keeping coastal ecosystems healthy. Responsible stewardship also requires effective fisheries management, strong penalties for polluters and a global carbon emissions reduction.

With pollution, climate change and increased shipping and development along Canada’s coast, it’s more important than ever to reduce the risks to ecosystems that provide us with the fish we eat, the air we breathe and the bounty of nature we love. Marine protected areas on their own won’t be enough to do all that, but with strong regulations and safeguards, they’re one piece of the intricate, multidimensional puzzle.

David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Communications Specialist Panos Grames.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

Image: Murchison and Faraday Islands, Gwaii Hanaas National Park Reserve, British Columbia, Canada. Photo: by David Will/Island Conservation via Flickr

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Salmon have been swimming in Pacific Northwest waters for at least seven million years, as indicated by fossils of large saber-tooth salmon found in the area. During that time, they’ve been a key species in intricate, interconnected coastal ecosystems, bringing nitrogen and other nutrients from the ocean and up streams and rivers to spawning grounds, feeding whales, bears and eagles and fertilizing the magnificent coastal rainforests along the way. For as long as people have lived in the area, salmon have been an important food source and have helped shape cultural identities.

But something is happening to Pacific coast salmon. This year, B.C.’s sockeye salmon run was the lowest in recorded history. Commercial and First Nations fisheries on the world’s biggest sockeye run on B.C.’s longest river, the Fraser, closed. Fewer than 900,000 sockeye out of a projected 2.2 million returned to the Fraser to spawn. Areas once teeming with salmon are all but empty.

Salmon define West Coast communities, especially Indigenous ones. The West Coast is a Pacific salmon forest. Today, salmon provide food and contribute to sustainable economies built on fishing and ecotourism. West Coast children learn about the salmon life cycle early in their studies.

Salmon migrations, stretching up to 3,000 kilometres, are among the world’s most awe-inspiring. After spending adult lives in the ocean, salmon make the arduous trip up rivers against the current, returning to spawn and die where they hatched. Only one out of every thousand salmon manages to survive and return to its freshwater birthplace.

So what’s going wrong? Climate change is amplifying a long list of stressors salmon already face. Sockeye salmon are sensitive to temperature changes, so higher ocean and river temperatures can have serious impacts. Even small degrees of warming can kill them. Low river flows from unusually small snowpacks linked to climate change make a tough journey even harder.

Oceans absorb the brunt of our climate pollution — more than 90 per cent of emissions-trapped heat since the 1970s. Most warming takes place near the surface, where salmon travel, with the upper 75 metres warming 0.11 C per decade between 1971 and 2010. Although ocean temperatures have always fluctuated, climate change is lengthening those fluctuations. A giant mass of warmer-than-average water in the Pacific, known as “the blob”, made ocean conditions even warmer, with El Niño adding to increased temperatures. Salmon have less food, and face new predators migrating north to beat the heat.

Beyond creating poor environmental conditions for salmon, climate change increases disease risks. Warm conditions have led to sea lice outbreaks in farmed and wild salmon, and a heart and muscle inflammatory disease has been found in at least one farm. Scientists researching salmon movement through areas with farms are finding wild fish, especially young ones, with elevated parasite levels. Diseases that cause even slight deficiencies in swimming speed or feeding ability could make these marathon swimmers easy prey.

Some question whether wild salmon will remain a West Coast food staple. For the first time, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program has advised consumers to avoid buying chinook and coho from four South Coast fisheries. Researchers also predict changing conditions will drive important food fish north by up to 18 kilometres a decade.

Disappearing salmon don’t just affect humans but all coastal ecosystems and wildlife. Eighty-two endangered southern resident killer whales depend on chinook salmon to survive. As chinook stocks go down, the likelihood that these whales could become extinct goes up.

Although the federal government has committed to implement recommendations from Justice Bruce Cohen’s inquiry into Fraser River sockeye and to follow the Wild Salmon Policy, reversing this dire situation will take widespread concerted and immediate action. A weak provincial climate plan that fails to meet emissions targets and acceptance of new ocean-based fish farm applications won’t help wild salmon. We need to move fish farms out of the water and onto land.

Salmon are resilient and have survived ice ages and other challenges over millions of years. They’ve survived having their streams paved over. They’ve survived toxins dumped into their environments. The question is, can they — and the ecosystems that depend on them — survive climate change and fish farms and all the other stressors humans are putting on them?

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation senior communications specialist Theresa Beer.

Learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

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When the Catalyst Paper Company’s pulp mill was renovated in the 1980s, ancestral remains of the Halalt First Nation were found underneath a cement helicopter pad. The discovery was yet another piece of evidence that the mill, located in Crofton, B.C. about 45 kilometres north of Victoria, was built on culturally sensitive First Nation’s territory.

But according to the Halalt First Nation, cultural damage is only a part of the harm caused by the industrial facility, operating since 1957, that is responsible for the release of endocrine-disrupting and cancer-causing dioxins and furans into the local environment.

According to Eli Enns, director of operations for the Halaht, the ongoing pollution in the region is wreaking havoc on the local environment.

“You have the Crofton mill itself which has unfortunately cemented right over sacred burial sites of the Halalt Coast Salish peoples,” Enns says in a new film, premiered by the nation here on DeSmog Canada (see below).

“It has totally destroyed the estuary and traditional food systems for the Halalt. It has inundated the airshed with all kinds of toxic pollutants which will probably have long lasting and unpredictable effects on the health of the Halalt people and other local communities.”

Dioxins and furans, the byproduct of a chlorine bleaching process, bioaccumulate in the food chain and are stored in the fatty tissues of animals. The presence of dioxins in animals has been linked to birth defects, spontaneous abortions and tumors.

A 1991 report prepared for the B.C. Aquaculture Research and Development Council found blue heron near the Crofton mill suffering reproductive failure contained high levels of dioxins in their tissue.

Enns says the pollution has severely impacted the community and its ability to live in and off the land.

“The community’s use and enjoyment of their own village has been highly intruded upon,” he said.

The federal government released new rules regulating the release of dioxins and furans from pulp and paper mills in 1992, although for communities living near major polluters like the Crofton mill, it was too little too late. Major damage to fisheries near Crofton led to permanent closures in the Crofton region.

Enns told DeSmog Canada that new regulations or cleaner operations won’t help resolve the mill’s legacy pollution issues.

“There is no elimination that has happened.”

In 2015 Environment Canada listed the Crofton mill as the third largest source of air pollution in B.C. for 2013.

“Obviously you can create regulations on things but that doesn’t mean everyone is complying,” Enns said.

“There was unregulated polluting for a long time and now there may be certain measure that have been put into place to reduce those dioxins and furans but they are are still causing damage.”

The Halalt First Nation has launched a legal suit against Catalyst, claiming damages of $2 billion for impacts to biodiversity and local ecosystems as well as interference with aboriginal rights.

A second suit, launched by the Halalt along with two business partners —Sunvault Energy Inc. and Aboriginal Power Corp — claims an additional $100 million in damages as well as an injunction to permanently stop the mill’s activities.

The two cases were launched in January but have yet to make their way to the courts.

Halalt First Nations Elder Joseph Norris says he can recall his grandfather negotiating with the pulp mill in the 50s for the relocation of his people’s remains.

“They moved us out of there to where we are. He told them, ‘give us the opportunity to remove some of our ancient bones’…they didn’t care, they just built over [them],” Norris says in the film.

“The Halalt has taken the pulp mill to court… we’re not against what they’re doing and they have a lot of people working for them — but it’s what their distributing into our rivers and into our air.”

WATCH: Halalt #FirstNation’s Fight Against #VancouverIsland Pulp Mill Pollution https://t.co/lhaZ2WhoD7 #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/H18M6ceY11

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) July 20, 2016

Chief James Thomas of the Halalt First Nation says that before the mill was constructed his people were able to harvest seafood from the area without concern. Now, elevated levels of toxins present in the water have made it unsafe to do so.

“The carcinogens end up in the phytoplankton, the plankton feed the other animals and at the end of the day ends up in the food chain,” he said. “It accumulates faster probably in the birds than it does in us.”

“We’re not allowed to eat crabs out here anymore because of the dioxins and furans levels.”

Bill Bonsall, a Crofton resident and former cattle rancher, said his family has been on a local farm since 1873 and has since had to stop raising cows because of health problems they’ve traced back to contaminated water.

“If the cows don’t live on a farm you don’t make much money,” he said.

“The estuary is totally destroyed. It’s a disaster area now. How the hell are you going to live off the land when there’s nothing there?”

“I can remember this place for 80 years, vividly. I know there was fish in the creek, there were birds — it was beautiful.”

“There used to be seven oyster farms in the neighbourhood. Now there’s none, hasn’t been since the mill came in,” Bonsall says.

Chief Thomas says the entire region has been closed to fisheries because of the mill.

“You have a huge dead zone with no oxygen levels in this territory,” he says. “So baby fish coming out of the creek at the end of his knoll here, they go out there and their first breath in the ocean is in a zone with no oxygen."

For the Halalt, the negative effect of the mill on the environment means the end of a way of life.

“They’re destroying our way of life for the almighty dollar,” Thomas says. “We’re a non-treaty band, we’ve never extinguished anywhere our rights and titles.”

Thomas said elders in his community are passing away as the nation waits for resolution. He said ultimately the federal government is responsible for issuing the permits necessary to pollute.

For Norris, an elder participating in the battle, there is still a lesson to be learned from his grandfather’s teaching that you only take what you need.

“The younger generation needs to hear what it was like yesterday so they can build a better tomorrow,” he says.

Image: Crofton mill. Harvard Photos/Facebook

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This is a guest post by Benjamin Thibault and Andrew Read of the Pembina Institute. 

These are not good days for the global coal industry. There is bad news at every turn, with countless reports of “sputtering” and even falling demand.

Alberta has been a bastion for coal use in Canada. For now, the province burns more coal for electricity than all other provinces combined. But the writing has been on the wall for some time; over the long run, dirty coal-fired electricity is not compatible with credible climate change reduction strategies or with the public demand for cleaner air. These are the realities behind the province’s commitment to improve Alberta’s air quality and climate reputation by phasing out coal power pollution by 2030.

It is within this context that the Coal Association of Canada (CAC) is touring Alberta with “ACT information meetings.” But the “information” simply does not reflect coal’s stark modern reality. Let’s do some fact checking.

Coal is an egregious polluter, far beyond alternative electricity sources

In a recent article, CAC president Robin Campbell indicates his belief the provincial NDP government is scapegoating the coal industry with its Climate Leadership Plan commitment to phase out coal pollution.

Alberta has six coal plants with a total of 18 power units.

A credible climate plan for Alberta will focus on the largest sources of emission for which there are technical and economic reduction opportunities. Alberta has six coal plants of different sizes, with a total of 18 coal-fired units. One plant is a small one that no longer burns much coal. The other five plants make up half of the top 10 greenhouse gas emitters in Alberta. For the same amount of electricity produced, they emit carbon pollution at two to three times the rate of new, high-efficiency natural gas power plants, which — along with non-emitting alternatives like renewables — make coal power unnecessary today.

The air pollution metrics look even worse. The five coal plants dominate the biggest polluter lists for a number of the most notorious air contaminants including nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide and mercury.

The province’s two newest units are still significant polluters

According to the article, Campbell feels emissions from the province’s new-generation coal-fired plants are not as bad as the government makes them out to be. “When you look at the newest plants, the one at Genesee and the one at Keephills, there’s hardly any emissions coming out of them at all,” he writes.

Campbell focuses on these two units because they are more efficient and have better pollution controls than the other 16. When drawing comparisons to old, dirty coal plants, practically all new installations appear clean. These two new units emit nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxide at about a quarter the rate as the older 16.

But they are still major sources of air pollution. They emit more than six times as much NOx as the projected emissions from a new combined cycle natural gas plant. And because neither renewables nor natural gas emit many other pollutants (i.e., SO2and mercury), even new coal units are just the cleanest players in their own dirty power league.

Rates of SO2 and NOx pollution at coal plants — both old and new — are much higher than alternative sources of electricity generation.

Alberta has serious air quality problems and coal power is a significant contributor

Campbell points to a University of Alberta study that found “coal-fired power plants had little effect on overall air quality in Edmonton.” He goes on to say. “I look at the air quality in Alberta and there's no cleaner air anywhere. So to blame it on the coal industry is just a fallacy.”

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Alberta has serious air quality concerns. Five of Alberta’s 11 listed municipalities are among Canada’s worst 25 — of 131 total municipalities in Canada — for annual mean concentration of fine particulate matter, one of the most pervasively harmful air contaminants. Edmonton and Calgary are in the worst 15, while Red Deer topped the list. Toronto came in at 36, also better than Fort Saskatchewan and Drayton Valley. This is perhaps a surprise until we recall that Toronto’s air quality has improved in the years since closing its coal plants while Edmonton’s has worsened.

Environment Canada estimates have shown poor air quality — including from coal plants in Alberta — is responsible for sending people to emergency rooms, keeping children indoors and even premature death. Late last year, the province acknowledged the Red Deer region is failing to meet a federal standard for air qualitywhile four other regions of the province are approaching limits. Minister of Environment, Shannon Phillips says she is committed to finding ways to protect Albertans from these pollutants. “We know, the science tells us, that air quality has a direct impact on human health and that’s of concern to us as a government,” she said.

The cause of fine particulate matter exceedances in the Edmonton area is secondary formation from other pollution, particularly NOx and SO2. Imaging of both types of pollutants demonstrates some problem areas of large polluters in Alberta. There are a number of different sources, but we know that electricity from coal is a major source of both pollutants in Alberta — including the Edmonton region. It is also worth noting that coal generated electricity has increased in recent years.

 We need to take measures to address the whole spectrum of polluters — refining, transportation and buildings — to improve our air. For some of these sources, this means tackling over 3 million tailpipes and nearly as many building furnace flues. Clearly, when alternative electricity generation options are available already, Alberta’s handful of smokestacks must be prime targets for pollution reduction.

For too long, the former Alberta government — under which Campbell served as environment minister — donned rose-coloured glasses, ignored the problem and failed to take measures that can make us healthier. Joining international trends away from coal is not “scapegoating” or “blame,” it’s taking action in the public’s interest.  

The president of the Coal Association of Canada, Robin Campbell, is currently touring Alberta. He is making a number of assertions about Alberta’s coal industry and the province’s Climate Leadership Plan. This is the first in a series of blogs by the Pembina Institute to address those claims and to reiterate the importance of Alberta’s pledge to phase out coal-fired electricity generation.

*Edit (March 14, 2016): On March 10, 2016, TransAlta wrote to the Pembina Institute to ask it to change this blog to reflect that the company did not in fact fund the University of Alberta study mentioned in the blog. Around that same date, the company changed its own webpage about the study to delete the following sentence: “TransAlta financially supported Dr. Kindzierski’s work, but had no direct involvement in the scientific investigation or the interpretation of the results.” (Original version cached as of March 9; also available as a pdf.)

Image: Thermal coal from the Genesee mine near Edmonton. Photo: Coal Association of Canada.

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This article by policy analyst Matt Horne originally appeared on the Pembina Institute website.

Last week, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna and Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr announced Canada’s intention to apply a climate test to major energy infrastructure proposals. This was the fifth of five new principles they announced to improve environmental assessments in the country.

The change is good news because it will fill a long-standing gap in the country’s environmental assessment process. The standard approach has been to look at individual oil pipeline or LNG terminal proposals without worrying about the oilsands mines or gas fields they’re connected to. The new approach will include the carbon pollution from the project being proposed and the carbon pollution from the development associated with it.

What the federal government hasn’t said yet is how they plan to evaluate the new information and integrate it into their eventual decisions. Here are four questions I’d like to see included in their climate test, using Petronas’s Pacific NorthWest LNG project to illustrate how they might work. In many cases, the federal government — as opposed to the proponent — is in the best position to address these questions.

The project is proposed for Lelu Island at the mouth of the Skeena River in northwest B.C. and is a good example of how important it is to look at the associated upstream development. The standard approach to environmental assessment would consider the 4 million tonnes of carbon pollution from the LNG terminal — just shy of the emissions from 900,000 cars on the road. Not a small amount by any means, but if the scope is broadened to include the carbon pollution from the connected pipelines, gas processing facilities and gas wells, the number almost triples to 11 million tonnes.

Question 1: Are there opportunities to cut carbon pollution?

One of the reasons for doing environmental assessments is to ensure that proponents are planning to use the best available processes and technologies. In other words, can we build the same project with fewer impacts on the environment? A climate test should help us do a better job of that for large energy projects by looking at the full range of opportunities to reduce carbon pollution. And the same approach should apply for the newly broadened scope of assessment.

In the case of the Petronas proposal, the results aren’t great. Based on our analysis, the 11 million tonnes of carbon pollution the project would be responsible for could be cut in half with better technologies and practices. These include opportunities like using renewable energy instead of gas and reducing methane leaks from gas wells and pipelines.

Some of the opportunities are directly in Petronas’s control. For example, Petronas’s proposal would be powered entirely by gas, but there’s no reason why they couldn’t be using renewable energy. For example, the LNG Canada and Woodfibre proposals — both of which are also in B.C. — intend to use about 20 per cent and 100 per cent renewable energy, respectively.

By expanding the scope of assessment, the revised process should also include opportunities outside of Petronas’s direct control. This is where it seems more appropriate for the federal government to be considering these opportunities as opposed to asking the proponent to do so.

A specific example is the methane that is released from valves and controls along the gas supply chain. These are a significant source of carbon pollution and can be reduced or eliminated with improved technology and better leak detection programs. A recent study by ICF International found that methane emissions from Canada’s oil and gas sector could be reduced by 45 per cent for less than $3 per tonne of carbon pollution. The federal government has the ability to consider analyses like these to determine if there are further opportunities to cut carbon pollution.

Question 2: Are the policies in place to ensure carbon pollution is minimized?

While there is no shortage of opportunities to reduce carbon pollution, there is also no shortage of opportunities not being pursued because of a lack of effective climate policy. Without carbon prices that increase over time and effective regulations, the business case to reduce carbon pollution isn’t strong enough. Where policies are lacking, the federal government can work with the provinces to ensure that any gaps are filled with a mix of provincial and federal policies.

In the case of Petronas, the province’s Climate Leadership Team provided a clear statement that those policies aren’t yet in place. The team concluded that the province was not on track to meet its targets and that B.C.’s carbon pollution was going to rise without new climate policies. They provided the province a package of recommendations — including a number for LNG and natural gas — that would help the province maintain a strong economy and get back on track to cutting carbon pollution. Those recommendations have yet to be adopted by the government, so the carbon pollution from any development that does proceed will be much higher than necessary.

Question 3: Does the project fit within a plan to meet climate commitments?

Canada has pledged to cut carbon pollution so that the country is responsible for at most 524 million tonnes by 2030. And that number will need to continue dropping post-2030. In assessing the carbon pollution from any proposed project, the government should be able to show how that upward pressure is accounted for in their plan to meet their targets in the medium and long-term.

The 11 million tonnes of carbon pollution from Petronas’s LNG project and the associated upstream development would account for over 2 per cent of Canada’s 2030 target. If the government decided to approve the project, they’d need to show how that 11 million tonnes fits into a plan that meets their 2030 target and positions them for further reductions post-2030.

Question 4: Is the project viable as world moves away from fossil fuels?

If the world’s governments collectively achieve the ambitions they agreed to at the Paris climate talks in December, it will mean a rapid shift away from fossil fuels. If that happens, there will be abundant global supply of oil, gas and coal, without anyone wanting to buy it. In that scenario, will Canadian suppliers of fossil fuels be able to compete for an ever-shrinking market or will they be priced out? While we can’t answer these questions definitively today, the cabinet should consider them and the economic risks they could pose to the country.

I co-authored a paper looking at the role of natural gas in a world with strong climate policies. In this scenario, gas demand peaks in 2030 and drops below current levels by mid-century and continues to decline after that. Those numbers are based on scenarios in which the world avoids two degrees of warming. If we get close to avoiding 1.5 degrees of warming, which was the agreement in Paris, the peak in global gas demand will need to be sooner and lower.

Petronas says they want to be operating by 2020, which is 10 years (or less) before global gas demand would peak and then begin a 50-year decline. How robust is their business case to that drop in demand and the accompanying drop in price? It’s possible they could be one of the suppliers that manage to stay afloat. It’s also possible they could sink. The government should be aware of those risks in making its decision. So there you have it — four questions that should be on Canada’s new climate test when it deliberates on the carbon pollution associated with major energy projects. They aren’t easy questions to answer, but tests aren’t supposed to be easy. They’re supposed to make you think.

Author's Notes:

• In this article, we use a Global Warming Potential (GWP) of 34 for methane emissions in calculating the carbon pollution from the Petronas LNG project and associated upstream development. The backgrounder on the project that we published in July 2014 has slightly lower numbers because we used a GWP of 25 for methane.
• The carbon pollution estimates for the Petronas project and the associated upstream development are based on phases 1 and 2 (19.2 million tonnes of LNG per year) of the proposal going ahead.

Image: Matt Klotz

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Chevron lost a high-profile pollution case in Ecuador in 2011 and was ordered to pay $9.5 billion for cleanup of billions of gallons of toxic waste in the Amazon rainforest. So far, the company hasn’t paid a dime — but a recent ruling in Canada might finally force Chevron to pay up.

Chevron appealed the 2011 ruling all the way to Ecuador's highest court, the National Court of Justice, which voted 5-0 in 2013 against the company. But Chevron still refuses to comply with the ruling, and since the Big Oil behemoth has no assets in Ecuador, the plaintiffs were forced to seek enforcement of the decision elsewhere.

Last Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled unanimously to allow Ecuadorian plaintiffs to pursue just such an enforcement action. In the majority opinion, Justice Clément Gascon wrote that the ruling had implications for attempts to hold the entire global oil industry accountable for its pollution and other abuses.

“In a world in which businesses, assets and people cross borders with ease, courts are increasingly called upon to recognize and enforce judgments from other jurisdictions,” Gascon wrote in the 7-0 ruling, according to The Globe & Mail. “Sometimes, successful recognition and enforcement in another forum is the only means by which a foreign judgment creditor can obtain its due.”

Some 30,000 Ecuadorians have been affected by the oil pollution in the Amazon, left behind when Texaco (which Chevron bought in 2000) ceased operating hundreds of oil wells in the country in 1990.

Humberto Piaguaje, the Coordinator of the Union of People Affected by Texaco, welcomed the ruling, saying in a statement, “after 22 years we can perform actions to collect the judgment against Chevron and immediately start repairing our territories."

Chevron is fighting a multi-front battle against the Ecuadorian judgement. The company secured a favorable ruling under RICO statutes in a New York court last year after its lawyers convinced a federal judge that the Ecuador ruling was the result of a corrupt judicial process.

The company has also entered into an arbitration process at the Hague, where its lawyers are attempting to argue that the government of Ecuador absolved Texaco of all liability when it ceased its Ecuador operations and left the country 25 years ago, though Chevron’s main legal defense in that case recently hit a major snag when it was rejected by the arbitrators.

Chevron once issued a statement threatening the Ecuadorians with "a lifetime of appellate and collateral litigation" if they continued to pursue their lawsuit — a company official later vowed to "fight until hell freezes over . . . and then we'll fight it out on the ice" — and the company appears to be making good on that threat.

Still, the Canada ruling comes at a bad time for Chevron, which has lost as much as $100 billion in market value over the past year thanks to cratering oil prices and other factors. Among them is the fact that the company made $24.7 billion from operations over that same time period while laying out $41.7 billion in expenditures and dividend payments.

At some point, says Amazon Watch’s Paul Paz y Miño, Chevron investors have to start wondering if the billions spent by the company on its aggressive, scorched earth legal strategy have really been worth it — especially as Ecuadorians continue to get sick and die as a result of the pollution still littering the forest floor.

“What does that say about [CEO John Watson’s] leadership? If I were a shareholder I’d say you have to pay this back to the company. You can’t mismanage the funds of our shareholders any further,” Paz y Miño told DeSmog.

The Financial Post reports that Chevron has assets worth roughly $15 billion in Canada, more than enough to satisfy the Ecuadorian judgement.

The Canadian assets include a network of Chevron gas stations in B.C.; a 20 per cent-stake in the Athabasca Oil Sands Project in Alberta; a 26.9 per cent interest in the Hibernia Field and a 23.6 per cent interest in Hibernia South Expansion off the shore of Newfoundland and Labrador; a 26.6 per cent interest in the Hebron Field in Newfoundland; an interest in the Duvernay Shale Field; and an interest in the Kitimat LNG Project in B.C.

The Ecuadorian plaintiffs say they want to seize and sell the shares of Chevron Canada to satisfy the $9.5 billion judgment — which has actually risen to $10 billion with interest, according to Amazon Watch’s Paz y Miño, who says the Canadian courts will count that interest.

But even if the plaintiffs ultimately win the enforcement action in Canada, a judge will still have to sort through the so-called "corporate veil" and determine whether the seizure of assets owned by Chevron Canada, which is not directly owned by Chevron, can be used to satisfy the latter's debt. No less than seven companies stand between Chevron Canada and its US-based parent company, according to the Financial Post.

In the end, however, Paz y Miño says the lawsuit has never been about money.

“They’re sitting there twisting a knife into the people of Ecuador,” he told DeSmog. “This isn’t about saying, ‘These people were responsible for something that happened in the past, and they should be held accountable.’ It’s about stopping the poisoning of people that’s still going on. Chevron is continuing to poison people, and won’t clean up the pollution.”  

Image Credit: Jeff Whyte / Shutterstock.com

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Promises of a closer relationship between B.C. and Alaska and more consultation on B.C. mine applications are a good start, but, so far, Southeast Alaska has no more guarantees that those mines will not pollute salmon-bearing rivers than before this week’s visit by B.C.’s Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett, say Alaskan fishing and conservation groups.

Bennett, accompanied by senior civil servants from the ministries of Energy and Mines and Environment, took a conciliatory tone as he met with state officials, policy-makers and critics of what is seen as an aggressive push by B.C. to develop mines in the transboundary area, close to vitally important salmon rivers such as the Unuk, Taku and Stikine.

“I understand why people feel so strongly about protecting what they have,” Bennett said in a Juneau news conference with Alaska Lt. Governor Byron Mallott.

“There’s a way of life here that has tremendous value and the people here don’t want to lose it. I get that,” he said.

But promises of a strengthened dialogue and more opportunities to comment on mine applications fall far short of a growing chorus of Alaskan demands that the issue be referred to the International Joint Commission, formed under the Boundary Waters Treaty, which forbids either country from polluting transboundary waters.

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It was a step forward to have such a high-level meeting, said Chris Zimmer of Rivers Without Borders, but it is an international issue that demands international attention.

“Increased involvement in the B.C permitting process is not a bad thing, but it is not a solution on its own. In other words, we stand firm for the need of an international solution under the Boundary Waters Treaty,” Zimmer said.

Both sides agreed the status quo cannot continue, but the question is how to move forward, Zimmer said.

“How do we move from words to real, concrete action to protect Alaska’s interests?”

Bennett did not rule out the possibility of going to the International Joint Commission, but felt it was premature and the commission should be brought in only if the province and state could not work it out between themselves, said Heather Hardcastle of Salmon Beyond Borders, a coalition of fishing, tribal, tourism and community organizations.

There was also no agreement on the question of how Alaskans would be compensated if there was an upstream spill.

“We are saying we are taking on the lion’s share of the risk and we are not receiving the benefits and there is nothing in place right now, Minister Bennett told us, to deal with liability,” Hardcastle said at a news conference following a meeting with Bennett.

“That’s just unacceptable to us that there’s nothing to compensate us for the lack of our livelihood.”

Financial assurances that Alaskans would be compensated if B.C. mining damages fisheries and water quality are needed prior to projects receiving permits, Hardcastle said.

Dale Kelley, Alaska Trollers Association executive director, said the universal theme was how to ensure no harm befalls Alaska’s fisheries.

“It was quite disturbing to hear the minister say there really is no remedy,” she said.

Both federal governments need to be involved in compensation discussions as a spill would mean a disaster on a scale that could not be handled by the state and provincial governments, Kelley said.

During the visit, Bennett agreed that B.C. should fix leakage from the Tulsequah Chief Mine, that, through a tributary, flows into the Taku River.

Decades of failed promises to fix the leakage have been a thorn in the side of many Alaskans, even though it is not known whether the mine drainage is hurting fish.

After touring the Taku River by helicopter Monday, Bennett told reporters it should be fixed.

“I think B.C is going to have to find a way to rectify it sooner than later and I think it is a most legitimate criticism of us by those folks in Alaska who don’t like it,” he said.

The Tulsequah Chief, now owned by Chieftain Metals Corp, was closed by Cominco in 1957 without acid mine drainage cleanup or site reclamation and despite numerous B.C orders, subsequent owners failed to clean up the mess. The mine was bought by Chieftain in 2010 when the company accepted the environmental liabilities and installed an interim water treatment plant.

“It’s clearly a black eye for Canada,” Zimmer said.

Solutions now, if Chieftain does not reopen the mine and get a grip on the drainage problems, are for B.C. to close down the mine properly — something likely to cost multi-millions of dollars — or to spend $4-million a year to treat the waste in perpetuity, Zimmer said.

“We are looking for very specific action to back these words up.”

Photo: Minister of Energy and Mines Bill Bennett. Credit: Province of British Columbia.

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