The election of the United Conservative Party government in Alberta has kept one Edmonton-based librarian very busy.

In what has come to be known as “guerrilla archiving,” Katie Cuyler, a public services and government information librarian at the University of Alberta, has gone about saving all data and information hosted on the Government of Alberta web pages before it is turned over from the NDP to the UCP.

“We know that when governments change, they usually change all of the websites. That can often include a lot of reports or data that was made available through those websites,” Cuyler told The Narwhal.

“We’re going to make sure those are captured and they continue to be made publicly available.”

Cuyler crawls and archives government web pages every six months or so but ahead of the election she started additional rounds. Cuyler said it used to be that paper copies of the information was sent to libraries, but in the age of the Internet, information can vanish more easily without notice.

Katie Cuyler on February 15, 2018. Photo: John Ulan / University of Alberta Libraries

Academics and industry experts alike reached out to Cuyler to express concern that climate change policy and environmental monitoring documentation and data, as well as information about NDP social programs might be erased.

Cuyler’s archival efforts are a part of a broader network of university librarians across the country called the Canadian Government Information Digital Preservation Network, whose mission is to preserve digital collections of government information.

“The initiative started around the Stephen Harper era,” Cuyler said. “People are concerned and people have seen trends recently with stuff happening in the States, and in Ontario where more information, more reports have been going missing.”

Under the Harper government, 16 federal science libraries were quietly shuttered, in some instances their archives  destroyed.

In the United States after President Donald Trump was elected, “thousands of web pages with climate change information have been removed or buried at agencies including U.S. [Environmental Protection Agency], the Interior and Energy departments and elsewhere across the government,” Scientific American reported.

Similarly in Ontario, when the Progressive Conservative Party came to power last summer, documentation of previous programs seemingly disappeared overnight. The Ontario government recently cut the province’s library service budget by 50 per cent. 

“Environmental initiatives like the GreenON rebate program were shuttered and then their web presence was removed within days,” said Nich Worby, the government documents librarian at the University of Toronto.

“That information is only available now through the archives created by the University of Toronto and the Internet Archive.”

All of the information Cuyler is archiving for Alberta is being made available on the University of Alberta website or through Wayback Machine, if the URL of the previous site is known.

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Research released by the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health on the health effects of coal-fired power plants was reviewed prior to publication by TransAlta, one of Alberta’s largest utility providers and coal producers, documents released to The Narwhal under the Freedom of Information Act reveal.

More than 550 pages of emails and documents exchanged between TransAlta executives and University of Alberta researcher Warren Kindzierski show the company was heavily involved in assigning, reviewing and publicizing research that would promote the coal industry as the government moved forward with a province-wide coal phase-out.

The correspondence between Kindzierski and TransAlta show the researcher sought input from company executives on draft versions of his research, asking how the company would like to proceed based on his findings. Kindzierski also accompanied TransAlta executives to meetings with government officials where Kindzierski presented slides reviewed in advance by the company.

The documents also show Kindzierski offered pointers for TransAlta communications personnel to consider during the development of company messaging.

In one email to TransAlta, Kindzierski tells officials they will “not be disappointed” in his findings.

“These emails show a pretty close relationship between TransAlta and Dr. Kindzierski, and in some cases show that Dr. Kindzierski was aware of the outcome that TransAlta wanted from his research, which could facilitate bias in his research,” Andrew Read, a professional engineer and former senior analyst with the Pembina Institute who is now working with the city Edmonton’s environmental strategies team, told The Narwhal upon reviewing a portion of the documents.

“What would have happened if the research didn’t align with TransAlta’s interests? Would we have ever seen the publication then?”

TransAlta paid University of Alberta $54,000 for research on health impacts of coal

A previous Freedom of Information request found TransAlta is a regular funder of Kindzierski’s research at the University of Alberta. Those documents revealed TransAlta provided the University of Alberta $54,000 in exchange for research on the health impacts of coal-fired power plants near Edmonton.

The findings of that initial information request prompted The Narwhal to file a secondary request, asking for communications between Kindzierski and TransAlta during the time the research was undertaken.

TransAlta owns and operates Canada’s largest surface strip coal mine, the Highvale Mine. The 12,600-hectare coal mine, managed by TransAlta’s wholly-owned subsidiary Sunhills Mining, produces 13 million tonnes of thermal grade coal each year, which is used to power three of TransAlta’s power stations.

In September 2015 a national air quality study found Alberta had some of the worst air quality levels in Canada due to coal power plants, oil and gas development and vehicle use.

The new tranche of documents show that in light of that study, on September 10, 2015, Oliver Bussler, director of sustainable development at TransAlta, told Kindzierski his research would be “very timely” and asked, “since you are a recognized expert in this area, I was wondering if you have heard what the Environment Ministry may have planned to address the cause of air pollution.”

Kindzierski responded to Bussler’s email saying, “ ‘far-fetched’ would be a good way to characterize the lack of understanding of this issue.”

In April of 2015 the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), a public health and environmental advocacy group, released a study that showed that, according to government of Alberta figures, levels of harmful air pollution in Edmonton exceeded those of Toronto, a major metropolis with five times the population.

The study showed that during several winter days between 2010 and 2012, levels of particulate matter in Edmonton exceeded legal limits. Fine particulate matter, according to Alberta Environment, measures 2.5 microns or less in diameter. Red blood cells are 5 microns in diameter and the width of an average human hair is roughly 75 microns.

Because of its small size, fine particulate matter, referred to as PM2.5, can accumulate in the respiratory system and dissolve into the bloodstream, leading to chronic health effects and breathing problems.

A broad mix of emissions come from the burning of coal in addition to PM 2.5: SOx, NOx, mercury, cadmium, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and benzenes. These pollutants have significant effects on respiratory and cardiovascular health and some are cancer-causing agents.

Kindzierski has published several studies showing pollutants in the Alberta airshed come from a mix of sources and not just coal. He has used his research to argue coal is being unfairly targeted and that harmful impacts associated with burning coal are overblown.

According to public disclosure records, Kindzierski made $194,670.22 in salary and benefits at the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health in 2016. He made $189,603.06 in 2015.

TransAlta provided at least another $175,000 to the University of Alberta between 2013 and 2015 through additional sponsorship arrangements that are not transparent to the public, raising concerns about the movement of industry funds through public institutions.

‘Remove the slides’

In a series of e-mails between Kindzierski and Bussler the two discussed a presentation Kindzierski would make to Alberta government officials regarding his research.

Kindzierski provided Bussler with a draft version of a presentation, which Bussler said he would review and “provide feedback.”

Kindzierski offered to remove material in his presentation related to the CAPE study: “We can possibly remove the slides related to 2010/CAPE claim.”

Bussler replied: “I have no concerns with including the slides related to 2010/CAPE claim. Since the CAPE claims are on everyone’s’ minds [sic], I think it would be best to address them upfront.”

The documents show Kindzierski made alterations in his presentation in advance of a series of meetings with government officials.

“We have reorganized the presentation, putting the majority of the technical details in the appendix,” Kindzierski wrote to Bussler on September 12, 2015.

“The presentation looks good from my perspective,” Bussler replied. “Since my colleagues are more familiar with the policy maker audience to whom you will be presenting, I’m going to see if they have any final comments on the materials.”

In another e-mail Bussler noted: “It is not my intention to suggest what you should say. The study is very much your work and independent. I do however think it is important how we decided [sic] to relay the information should consider the audience.”

A spokesperson for the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health said as an independent researcher hired by TransAlta, Kindzierski “was obligated to present his findings to TransAlta for preview prior to publication.”

“At the University of Alberta, we value intellectual integrity, freedom of inquiry and expression, and the equality and dignity of all persons as the foundation of ethical conduct in research, teaching, learning, and service,” the spokesperson said.

“It is our position that Kindzierski has acted according to these values and conducted his research and communication of that research, ethically and responsibly.”

Kindzierski declined to provide further comment, saying “all the comments I would have, they were provided by the university officially.”

Read said universities need to take claims of bias in research very seriously.

“It’s critical to resolve and make clear to the public they are providing independent research that can be relied on legitimately,” he said.

Industry-funded research concluded coal-fired power plants safe for health of local residents

Kindzierski’s research, published on TransAlta’s website in the spring of 2016 and bearing the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health insignia, concluded coal-fired power plants near the city of Edmonton do not negatively impact the health of local residents.

In a previous interview Kindzierski said the study had been accepted for publication at three peer-reviewed “high-quality impact journals.”

However, in an e-mail to Don Wharton, TransAlta’s vice-president of policy and sustainability, Kindzierski writes the study accepted for publication is not the one published on TransAlta’s website.

“Our study being published is actually different than what we did last fall; but the news from your perspective is just as good,” Kindzierski wrote to Wharton.

In the same exchange Kindzierski asks Wharton to extend TransAlta’s funding contract for two months. “This allows me to continue funding the research assistant on your contract,” he wrote.

Additional emails exchanged between Kindzierski and Wharton show Kindzierski actively solicited feedback from the company on draft versions of his research.

In an email dated October 15, 2015, Kindzierski provided Wharton with a copy of the draft report. Two days later Kindzierski sent a revised version of the report to Wharton and followed up after a week, asking if company representatives had any response.

“Don, I hope things are going well,” Kindzierski wrote on October 28, 2015. “I would like to check with you about any feedback from the draft report we provided with you [sic]11 days ago and finalizing the report.”

On November 3, Kindzierski wrote Wharton again: “I am just checking again about whether you have any feedback on our report.”

In November 2015 Alberta announced a plan to eliminate the province’s 18 coal-fired power plants by 2030. Alberta uses more coal for power production than all other Canadian provinces combined.

Wharton responded on November 19, saying he had discussed Kindzierski’s findings with the mayors of more than 30 municipalities in Alberta who had expressed concern over the province’s plan to shutter coal plants.

“We have had a request from the mayors…to see the report as soon as it is available,” Wharton wrote to Kindzierski. “You may have noticed that these same mayors have been in the media lately expressing concern about the spectre of accelerated coal plant closures and the effects on their communities.”

In a submission to the Alberta Climate Change Advisory Panel TransAlta referred to Kindzierski’s research as “commissioned independent work through the University of Alberta” that was done “in response to continued unsubstantiated claims that coal-fired generation was a major contributor to Edmonton’s air quality events, and a rationale for the need to accelerate the retirement of coal units.”

Read, now with the City of Edmonton, said it’s clear TransAlta used Kindzierski’s research to lobby municipalities.

“This wouldn’t be a problem if we knew with certainty the research was unbiased,” Read said. “The real worry I see with this specific case is one of disregarding certain perspectives arbitrarily because of whatever interests that individual might have.”

From a public interest perspective, Read added, air quality issues in Alberta are of high concern.

Kindzierski’s research raises questions about the primacy of the public interest in work bearing the University of Public Health’s branding.

Joe Vipond, a physician and board member of CAPE, said he believes Kindzierski’s research was funded explicitly to find evidence there is no effect of burning coal in Edmonton’s airsheds.

“TransAlta, I would surmise, did not fund Kindzierski’s modeling in some altruistic effort to understand the effects of TransAlta’s own coal plants on Edmonton’s airshed,” Vipond said.

“He has even gone so far as to suggest that instead of air pollution being harmful to human health, it is neutral, or even possibly beneficial. This would be analogous to me, as a physician, to stating smoking is good for you.”  

Last year Vipond launched a complaint against Kindzierski with the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA) for violating his professional code of conduct as outlined in the Engineering and Geoscience Professions Act. The Narwhal has learned the investigation into Kindzierski has been ongoing for over 12 months and relates to complaints made by at least one additional individual.

Vipond said he finds it disturbing Kindzierski participated in TransAlta’s presentations to government as a representative of the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health.

“It nauseates me to think our institutions have been corrupted in such a manner.”

Sloan d’Entremont, professional engineer and investigator with APEGA, said the organization’s policy is not to comment on ongoing investigations.

”Due to confidentiality reasons, APEGA Investigations is not able to discuss anything related to complaints that are submitted to the Investigations Department,” she said.

Kindzierski TransAlta Correspondence Excerpts by The Narwhal on Scribd

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The lethal mix of migratory birds and oilsands tailings ponds are in the news again this month.

On September 20 we learned another 123 birds died or will be euthanized after landing on a Suncor tailings pond. And on September 27, Syncrude Canada will appear in court for failing to prevent the deaths of blue herons at an Alberta oilsands site, the very same crime the company was convicted of in 2010 after an estimated 1,600 ducks met the same fate on one of its tailings pond.

Convictions like Syncrude’s are supposed to help to prevent the deaths of waterfowl on oilsands sites. So why are we here again?

The outcome of the 2010 trial, in which Syncrude was found guilty of both federal and provincial crimes, resulted in a $3 million penalty, the lion’s share of which — $2.45 million — was handed out to a small group of beneficiaries in the largest “creative sentence” in Alberta’s history.

For certain crimes, judges can order creative sentencing penalties over and beyond fines; they can include reclamation activities, scholarships or research projects, for example. Creative sentencing projects are meant to compensate for harm caused by the crime and prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.

A deeper look at what happened to the $2.45 million provides a glimpse into the intriguing world of creative sentencing and how companies like Syncrude, along with a tightknit network of organizations, can quietly benefit from environmental crimes while avoiding public scrutiny.

Companies Can Look Charitable Through Creative Sentencing

My research team at Mount Royal University (co-investigator Gillian Steward and research assistants James Wilt and Cassie Riabko) found creative sentencing beneficiaries are usually hand-selected by both prosecution and defence and presented to the judge for consideration. There is no opportunity to apply for creative sentencing funds and no rationale is provided to the public as to why certain candidates are chosen over others — though our research shows connections to offending companies sure can help.

We studied 83 creative sentences for environmental crimes in Alberta and found a closed system where sentencing goals were not made public and much information is not in the public domain. This includes final financial reports and even some of the final creative sentencing projects themselves.

Creative sentences certainly take more work for the Crown to put together. In Alberta, they have been praised for providing quick funding to charitable organizations —the University of Alberta is the leading beneficiary —and for attempting to compensate for environmental harms through education, research and conservation projects. But creative sentencing fines have also been directed to wealthy industry groups including the The Canadian Association for Petroleum Producers and even to a government department.

How #Syncrude and Friends Benefitted from ‘Creative Sentence’ in 2010 #Oilsands #DuckDeaths https://t.co/7cLOF6hbyn #AbLeg @jpaskey

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) September 22, 2017

Our analysis shows there is a troubling lack of transparency around the public recognition of funds that may obscure the fact that companies are funding these projects as the result of a criminal conviction, rather than an act of generosity.

For example, many sentences portray convicted companies as “sponsors” or “donors.”

In 1999, Hub Oil was found guilty after an explosion killed two workers and was ordered to pay for two named scholarships at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology.

Although the creative sentence was explicitly part of Hub Oil’s conviction, the company is listed as a “sponsor” of the scholarships on the institute's website — meaning a possible reputational boost for what is seen publicly as philanthropy.

The same holds for the listing of The Devon Canada Corporation Bursary at Olds College; this came from a $60,000 creative sentence ordered after Devon was convicted under Alberta’s Water Act.

The Beneficiaries of Syncrude’s $2.45 Million

Three beneficiaries were awarded funds in Syncrude’s creative sentence: the University of Alberta ($1.3 million), Keyano College ($250,000) and The Alberta Conservation Association ($900,000). Each of these organizations had previously received creative sentence funding and Syncrude was a donor or had done contract work for each. (In the case of U of A, the donations were to other parts of the university.)

Groups at the forefront of environmental change were not chosen. For instance, Ecojustice, the environmental law group that first brought the charges against Syncrude in 2010, did not receive creative sentencing funds.

The bulk of Syncrude’s creative sentence went to research into improving bird monitoring and deterrent systems in the oilsands. The award was perhaps puzzling given prosecutor Susan McRory spoke at length during Syncrude’s sentencing hearing about the company’s failure to use existing research into bird deterrence. (It hadn’t deployed any bird deterrents by April 28 when ducks died on a frothy tar-like mat, despite knowing birds migrate in that month.)

McRory said Syncrude even failed to used its own research from the 1980s that predicted “an event similar to what happened in this case.”

A duck on Syncrude's Aurora tailings pond. Photo: Todd Powell, Alberta Fish and Wildlife

Despite this, University of Alberta professor Colleen Cassady St. Clair had impressed the judge as an expert witness for the prosecution. She was awarded a $1.3 million creative sentence to research and provide advice to industry on how to improve bird monitoring and deterrent systems for birds in the oilsands. She was also ordered to work with an industry advisory committee and to make all research public.

Cassady St. Clair hired dozens of researchers who in turn produced research used to make 43 scientific recommendations to industry. Syncrude was court-ordered to respond to St. Clair’s report but was also told it could choose to implement recommendations if they were “reasonable, reliable and cost effective.”

In a written response, Syncrude mentioned 21 of the 43 recommendations, avoiding any mention of specific cautions against the use of lasers for bird deterrence and the use of berms to attempt to separate more toxic from less toxic tailings.

Cassady St. Clair said she told Alberta Justice that Syncrude’s response was vague and seemed to be part of a risk management process. The ministry did not appeal the company’s response although the court gave it the right to.  The bird monitoring program was privatized and largely out of public view.

In an interview Cassady St. Clair said she remains hopeful the recommendations will positively impact bird monitoring and management.

“I think it could have a ripple effect over time,” she said.

Of fresh charges against Syncrude for bird deaths on a sump pond, she told CBC there were other bodies of water that needed to be monitored on these sites.

The Alberta Conservation Association (ACA) was given $900,000 to purchase land west of Edmonton known as Golden Ranches with the goal of preserving waterfowl habitat.

ICYMI: What You Need to Know About NAFTA’s Investigation into Oilsands Tailings Leaks

The award came through a contact: ACA's corporate lawyer* worked for the firm that Syncrude was using. She set up for the ACA to provide a proposal as to what it would do to compensate for the loss of waterfowl. Compensating for harm is one of the goals of creative sentencing. (Another Syncrude case lawyer declared his conflict of interest to the court as a board member of a partnering organization for that land purchase.) At the time, the ACA didn’t know if the property owner would sell indicating the speed at which the proposal had to go before the judge.

Syncrude is listed as a donor on a sign near the purchased property and, in a separate project, is listed as a sponsor of the Alberta Conservation Association “Discover Guide.”

Keyano College, located in Fort McMurray, received $250,000 to develop a new wildlife management diploma program. In its creative sentencing proposal to the court, Keyano said the program would include Indigenous and part-time students.

But after surveying industry partners, Keyano discovered companies prefered to hire general environmental managers with wildlife expertise, rather than wildlife managers.

In its final report to Alberta Justice, Keyano did not mention Indigenous students. It did note that the college requested a change to the creative sentence to allow it to embed new wildlife courses into its existing environmental management program rather than developing a new diploma program. But we were unable to find a new creative sentencing order in the public domain. The college said 33 students had graduated from the newly enriched program as of 2016.

Keyano also recorded an unspent $29,143 from the creative sentence would be put toward a research project conducted in partnership with Syncrude. No court response to this proposed partnership exists in the public record.

Where To Go From Here?

Looking back, Syncrude’s creative sentence can be said to be investing in research and education — but given the new Syncrude charges, it didn’t seem to address weaknesses in the system: identifying reasons for and preventing bird deaths on oilsands water sites. Perhaps, the notion of preventing migratory birds from landing on tailings ponds some 640 football fields in size is just not doable. But companies are obliged to try.

Looking back, we found the overall creative sentencing system is one that operates in haste. Beneficiaries who are privately approached by the Crown scramble to put relevant proposals together between conviction and sentencing dates but when changes are made after the fact, that’s kept out of the public domain. Many mentioned a fund with wide latitude that organizations could apply to would be a good idea. Alberta Environment is considering that idea, too.

Perhaps more troubling, is the system of close ties that binds friendly beneficiaries to offending companies. Ultimately, with no specific direction from the court otherwise, companies and beneficiaries can credit creative sentence projects like philanthropy, rather than a court-ordered punishment.

If the court considers a creative sentence in the blue heron case perhaps it should strongly consider ordering research into eliminating tailings ponds altogether.

*Owing to author error, a previous version of this article incorrectly stated that a lawyer on the Alberta Conservation Board helped pave the way for a creative sentence proposal. It was the ACA corporate lawyer who helped pave the way for a creative sentencing proposal in the Syncrude 2010 case, and not an ACA Board member. The ACA Board was not involved in the creative sentence. We regret the error. 

Image: Dead mallard drakes on Syncrude's Aurora tailings pond. Photo: Todd Powell, Alberta Fish and Wildlife

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The University of Alberta and TransAlta, a major Alberta utility company and coal producer, struck an agreement for the company to pay the university $54,000 to research the health impacts of coal-fired power plants near Edmonton, according to documents obtained by DeSmog Canada.

When TransAlta published the research — a study entitled Investigation of Fine Particulate Matter Characteristics and Sources in Edmonton, Alberta — on its website last spring the company initially stated it had sponsored the work, co-authored by Warren Kindzierski and fellow University of Alberta professor Aynul Bari.

But that sponsorship disclaimer was abruptly scrubbed from the company’s website.

Documents released to DeSmog Canada through Freedom of Information legislation show TransAlta did indeed enter into a sponsorship agreement with the University of Alberta that provided Kindzierski, as principle investigator, $54,000 to conduct the research.

TransAlta says that although it did provide the funds to the university, the university did not use the funds to support Kindzierski’s research.

“They kept our funds but did not use them towards the study, they redirected them elsewhere,” Stacy Hatcher, spokesperson for TransAlta, told DeSmog Canada.

Hatcher said because TransAlta did provide the funds to the university “we erred on the side of being completely transparent and stating up front that we had paid for it as that had been the offer.”

“It was a mistake on our part not to circle back and correct the news story once we learned the university did not accept the funding,” she added.

The undocumented movement of industry money on university campuses is nothing new.

Private sponsorship agreements, gifts, grants and donations have all been used as ways to financially support research, resulting in what some critics have identified as a problematic purchase of academic credibility by corporations.

In this instance, the question comes down to whether and how private funds are influencing public conversations about coal-fired power generation in Alberta.

Industry-Friendly Study Used to Fight Coal Phase-Out

The study, made available to the public on TransAlta’s site in late 2015, bears the branding of the University of Alberta’s School of Public Health and concludes the high number of coal-fired power plants near the city of Edmonton doesn’t negatively impact the health of local residents.

The research has been used by TransAlta to push for an alternative to the Alberta government’s plan to phase-out coal by 2030 (which is no small feat: Alberta uses more coal for power production than all other Canadian provinces combined).

In its submission to the Alberta Climate Change Advisory Panel TransAlta referred to the research as “commissioned independent work through the University of Alberta” that was done “in response to continued unsubstantiated claims that coal-fired generation was a major contributor to Edmonton’s air quality events, and a rationale for the need to accelerate the retirement of coal units.”

“You will see that the research shows minimal airshed impacts from operation of coal-fired generation to the west,” the submission read.

The research has also been used by vocal coal advocates, such as Robin Campbell, president of the Canadian Association of Coal, to argue against a coal phase-out.

TransAlta owns and operates Canada’s largest surface strip coal mine, the Highvale Mine. The 12,600 hectare coal mine, managed by TransAlta’s wholly-owned subsidiary Sunhills Mining, produces 13 million tonnes of thermal grade coal each year which is used to power three of TransAlta’s power stations. Since 2006, TransAlta stopped mining operations at two additional coal mines and as a result now purchases coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana.

TransAlta (burns coal and) paid U of A to conduct a health study (about coal). But there’s no connection, OK? https://t.co/SimArg2eOH #ableg

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) November 8, 2016

Corporate Sponsorship Agreements Commonplace

Sponsorship agreements between the University of Alberta and TransAlta are commonplace, Hatcher said: “TransAlta has a relationship with the university, and we have provided non-directed funding in the past for research and academic projects.”

Documents released to DeSmog Canada confirm this, showing TransAlta provided at least another $175,000 to the university between 2013 and 2015 through additional sponsorship arrangements.

However, the retroactive decision to ‘redirect’ the Kindzierski study funds raises questions about transparency and accountability.

The university’s Research Services Office, which appears as a signatory on the TransAlta sponsorship agreement, said it could not provide comment or release information regarding sponsorships.

A woman at the Research Services Office said simply, “We would not release any information to you of any kind” and recommended all inquiries be directed to the principle investigator: Kindzierski.

“No funds were expended [on that study],” Kindzierski told DeSmog Canada. “They were used after the study was done to support a post doctorate RA (research assistant) on other research activities.”

“Are you familiar with soft dollar funded positions? Why don’t you go ahead and learn about that?” Kindzierski said during a phone interview.

‘Soft money’ positions at universities are those funded by grants, awards and other forms of sponsorship that are usually impermanent and must be regularly sought after through application processes. Alternately, ‘hard money’ positions usually refer to tenure-track positions that are funded by tuition, endowments, government funding and philanthropy.

“All faculties, all programs, all departments at all universities have soft dollar funded positions, totally above board and everything,” he added.

Kindzierski said the research, which was published online without going through a full peer-reviewed process, has since been peer-reviewed, accepted and published at three “high-quality impact journals.”

When asked which journals the research appeared in, he responded, “I can name them but I have no desire to give them to you.”

“Go search. That’s good homework for you.”

“You’re no different than a reporter that is too lazy to find this stuff themselves,” Kindzierski said during the interview.

A similar paper by Kindzierski recently appeared in the journal Environmental Pollution, a peer-reviewed publication, but DeSmog Canada was unable to find the exact study in question published anywhere other than TransAlta’s website.

Documentation released to DeSmog Canada via Freedom of Information shows Kindzierski sent TransAlta a proposal of the study before research was undertaken. Records show this proposal was sent to Don Wharton, TransAlta’s vice president of policy and sustainable development, at TransAlta’s request in May 2015. The sponsorship agreement was signed in July 2015. The contents of the study proposal, sent from Kindzierski to Wharton, were redacted in the released documents.

Coal Pollution Still Dangerous to Health, Physician Says

Critics have called the independence of the study into question, saying TransAlta’s planned sponsorship could have introduced bias in the research questions pursued.

“I think after they published it they realized [there were going to be] a lot of people making a stink that there was a conflict of interest,” Joe Vipond, physician with the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), told DeSmog Canada.

“The optics were quite bad as far as bias is concerned in funding the study and that’s why they moved to make the money trail less obvious.”

Vipond is concerned about the way the study has been used to influence public debate about coal-fired power plants.

“It really distorts the conversation,” he said.

“I work in the medical field… and there is so much evidence of how funding and bias impacts conclusions in the scientific literature in health.”

But, he added, the average person isn’t taught to look as critically at this kind of literature as health professionals are.

“I think it’s very hard. People underestimate the power of money.”

He added that working in the medical field also exposes him to evidence that coal pollution affects respiratory health.

The Kindzierski study goes to great lengths to say pollution in the Edmonton airshed isn’t due to coal-fired power plants, Vipond said.

Recently Vipond co-authored a report, Breathing in the Benefits, released by the Pembina Institute, the Asthma Society, Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and the Lung Association, that estimated the phase-out of coal by 2030 in Alberta would avoid approximately 600 premature deaths, 500 emergency room visits, 80,000 asthma episodes, two million days of respiratory difficulty for individuals and nearly $3 billion in health benefits.

A previous report from the same group of organizations, A Costly Diagnosis: Subsidizing Coal Power with Albertans’ Health, found pollution from coal combustion affects respiratory and cardiovascular health as well as the central nervous system. The report says exposure to these pollutants can result in chronic respiratory illness and premature death.

“There is such a broad mix of emissions that come from coal: SOx, NOx, particulate matter 2.5 and mercury,” Vipond said.

“Then there’s a whole host of others like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and benzenes. That mix comes out of the stack and there is a lot of evidence for how [those pollutants] pollute lungs and the evidence on the impacts to cardiovascular health is even better.”

Particulate matter 2.5 is so fine, Vipond said, it gets into your lungs and can dissolve immediately into the bloodstream.

Andrew Read, environmental policy analyst with the Pembina Institute and contributor to the Breathing in the Benefits report, told DeSmog Canada there are no safe levels of particulate matter 2.5.

“Particulate matter doesn’t have a lower threshold where health impacts aren’t identified,” he said. “There is no argument that burning coal for electricity does not have substantial health impacts.”

Read added that reality should influence how we think about the future of coal-fired power.

Source: Pembina Institute

“The fact that there is no safe level of exposure to pollutants that are emitted by coal electricity is really important to consider,” he said. “If we expect to grow the economy and add industry to the province we have to remove some of these sources of emissions.”

The Kindzierski study produced for TransAlta “was really a political piece,” Read said.

“That’s the main frustration with the Kindzierski study — he could have added to the conversation or contributed in a way that added to the discussion but didn’t.”

Vipond said a presentation by Kindzierski to the Air and Waste Management Association found the short-term presence of particulate matter in the atmosphere resulted in fewer hospital visits for heart attacks.

“The conclusion was breathing coal-fired pollution is good for your health,” Vipond said.

“My feeling on the matter is that people who already have an agenda then go to find evidence that goes to back up that agenda. I think that’s true of humanity: it’s what we do.”

Vipond published a rebuttal of the Kindzierski study, saying there were major flaws in the methodology, including using limited air quality inputs and wind pattern information.

“I was annoyed [Kindzierski’s study] was out there and annoyed no one was challenging it.”

Research Shows Industry Funding Influences Academic Research

While industry funding doesn’t necessarily influence scientific research, a broad survey of research shows that it often does, according to Garry Gray, assistant professor of Sociology at the University of Victoria.

“If we just look at the outcomes [of research] — and that’s where we should focus — if we look at meta-analyses of funding, we see this in many areas over and over again, the source of funding does matter,” Gray told DeSmog Canada.

Gray spent three years as a research fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard’s Law School studying unethical behaviour in public interest institutions and conducting interviews with researchers in the field of public health and medicine.

His research (which he presents cogently in this TEDx talk) found that, yes, where research money comes from does indeed influence research outcomes.

“There is definitely a funding effect bias that takes place in research, especially when you can show where the funding sources are coming from.”

Gray’s research found that in often minor and subtle ways, researchers found ways to make their findings palatable to their funders.

“It doesn’t mean people were doing unethical research,” Gray said, “it means they were maybe framing their questions in certain ways or asking question A and not question B.”

Gray added universities are trying to better manage the problem of conflict of interest funding, but said they stop short of actually eliminating those funding relationships.

“I think there are a lot of problems today around research funding relationships,” he said.

Many of those ethical problems are not fully resolved by simply asking researchers to sign conflict of interest disclosure forms, he added.

There is often little transparency in how universities accept funding, Gray said, adding that can complicate the issue of public trust.

“Trust is definitely at stake,” he said. “There is this idea that universities are independent and this idea they are, for the most part, serving the public good. So there is this more implicit trust that we have for a project that comes out of the university.”

Yet with increasing amounts of private funds on university campuses, researchers may not be asking “the tougher questions” that are likely to benefit the general public.

“The question is, if we continue to shift funding models, who is going to ask those questions that are not going to be of interest to companies and industry and those types of funders?”

Laurie Adkin, associate professor in the University of Alberta’s Department of political science, told DeSmog Canada there are a lot of concerns about universities’ increasing reliance on corporate funds.

“It has been rather difficult to document the amount of corporate funding for individual researchers and their projects,” Adkins, who is a researcher with the Corporate Mapping Project, said.

“Partly because that information isn’t published anywhere and partly because it is difficult to record unless there is some sort of public announcement made.”

A request for comment from Samantha Pearson, director of corporate and foundation relations at the University of Alberta, went unanswered.

As a part of her research Adkin maps funding of energy-related research at the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary.

There is a significant amount of funding from the fossil fuel industry but also from the federal government at the University of Alberta, Adkin said, adding “a lot of that funding has been going into social licence research or prolonging the life of fossil fuels rather than going into renewable energies.”

“Of course in Alberta the University of Alberta has, at least under its previous president, billed itself as a flagship university for fossil fuel research,” she said.

The University of Alberta used to report industry funding but has since merged that category with funding from public institutions in its annual reporting, so there is no easy way to decipher where funding is coming from.

“You don’t know what faculty is getting what share or what research is getting funded,” she said.

Adkin said the question of the appropriateness of this practice is never raised.

“This is viewed as the model for what everyone should be doing.”

University of Alberta TransAlta Sponsorship Agreement for Kindzierski Coal Study FOI 2016 by DeSmog Canada on Scribd

Update: This piece was updated Thursday, November 10 at 11:46 a.m. to reflect TransAlta’s use of Kindzierski’s research to push for an alternative to Alberta’s Climate Change Plan, not to explicitly argue against the coal phase-out.

With files from Michael Fisher. 

Image: Emissions from a coal-fired power plant chimney in Germany. Photo: Patrick via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

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Implement an economy-wide carbon tax, attain “social licence,” score a federal approval for the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline.

the Alberta NDP’s rhetoric represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the point of social licence,

“It’s like saying: ‘if I’m good to my neighbour then I can engage in some petty theft of the corner store.’ As opposed to saying: ‘Being good to my neighbour and the environment just means that I’ve learned how to start to do that on an ongoing basis.’ It doesn’t open up the possibility for something else.”

Social Licence Responds to Perceived Flaws in Regulators

The concept of “social licence to operate” was birthed out of the mining sector in the late 1990s.

Jennifer Winter, director of energy and environmental policy at the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy, says the idea made sense in that particular context, with companies attempting to engage the immediate community with partnerships, Impact and Benefit Agreements (IBAs) and local hiring preferences.

However, Winter notes there’s never been a clear articulation of what social licence even is.

“It’s like any other buzzword,” she says. “It sounds good and you think it has meaning. But what is it? Who grants this licence?”

Szeman agrees that the definition of social licence is indeed murky. But unlike Winter — who suggests the discussion “definitely hasn’t helped in terms of people thinking of the NEB as an effective and neutral regulator” — he says he’s “very glad” that it’s being talked about and that it helpfully attempts to broaden the onus of responsibility beyond what agencies and boards currently require from companies.

“I think it’s this kind of sense that ‘is this a kind of enterprise that is a legitimate one in today’s world given the challenges that the entire society is facing, whether or not our legal description has caught up to it?’,” says Szeman, adding that the Alberta NDP is “abusing the concept” by detaching it from such roots.

‘It’s A Real Stretch For Governments to Claim to Grant Social Licence’

As opposed to corporate social responsibility — which is largely assessed and reported on by the company itself via annual reports and sizable marketing teams — the idea of social licence has been claimed by communities as a pressure point to make up for perceived deficiencies in consultations and environmental assessments conducted by governments and corporations.

Fiona MacPhail and Paul Bowles, both economics professors at the University of Northern British Columbia who were collaboratively interviewed via e-mail, noted that many communities have “co-opted” the term for their own purposes as opposed to the typical co-optation by industry and governments of terms like “empowerment” and “participation.”

“Seeing this, governments are entering the debate too and trying to use the language to support their aims, in this case by arguing that oil pipelines have social licence if they are accompanied by a carbon tax and climate change targets,” they write.

“It’s a real stretch for governments to claim to grant social licence [to themselves] since it’s their failure to ensure that the ‘political licences’ which they grant to resource firms have legitimacy that spurred the move to social licence in the first place.”

#Alberta’s #CarbonTax Doesn’t Equal ‘Social Licence’ for New Pipelines https://t.co/woeYeqDJSs #ableg #bcpoli #cdnpoli #KinderMorgan

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) November 8, 2016

Over Half of Canadians Have Little to No Confidence in the National Energy Board

This notion is especially true in the context of pipelines, which cross many jurisdictions that have distinct interests and concerns (including spills, tanker traffic and greenhouse gas emissions, all of which can result in problems far beyond the scope of provincial or national boundaries).

For instance, what does consent look like when a pipeline crosses dozens of First Nations, municipalities and tracts of private land? Is gaining an “approval” from 51 per cent of impacted citizens enough?

Winter argues that the job of regulators like the National Energy Board (NEB) and Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency (CEAA) isn’t to decide if every person and community is better off by having a pipeline, but if “Canada as a whole is better off.”

This perspective is echoed in the rhetoric of a unitary “Canadian public interest” that the NEB uses to describe its own responsibilities, as well as Notley’s submission to the NEB in support of Kinder Morgan’s proposal: “This important pipeline infrastructure will support an integrated energy economy in Canada that will be more attractive to investors, which in turn will generate more economic activity Canada-wide.”

But Szeman suggests that such nationalistic rhetoric is no longer sufficient.

“I find it very interesting the degree to which quite a large segment of the Canadian public don’t find the claims made on behalf of pipeline projects to have the proper amount of legitimacy,” he says. “Not because they don’t understand that it might lead to jobs and profits, but because they don’t buy the long-standing argument that the thing that matters above all else is jobs and profits.”

Commitments to Indigenous Rights and Climate Targets Currently Ignored

If the responsibilities and actions of the NEB and CEAA reflected an acknowledgement of the inability for Canada to both build new pipelines and meet international climate commitments, for instance, then perhaps it would be a different story.

Or if projects only proceeded with the guarantee of “free, prior and informed consent” as outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), then social licence might “not exist” as many conservative commentators insist.

But the overhaul of the NEB and CEAA hasn’t been completed in time to impact the review of the new Kinder Morgan pipeline, contradicting Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s pledge during the federal election to the Dogwood Institute’s Kai Nagata.

The project is still opposed by the mayors of Vancouver and Burnaby, the chief of Tsleil-Waututh Nation and the Treaty Alliance Against Tarsands Expansion, which features more than 50 signatories. On Oct. 24, 99 people received trespassing citations outside Parliament Hill while protesting the Kinder Morgan expansion; two weeks later, 15 people occupied the constituency office of Minister of Natural Resources Jim Carr for the same reason.

Alberta’s climate plan and Canada’s review of its environmental assessment process hasn’t done nearly enough to satisfy concerns about new pipelines that will allow for the further expansion of the oilsands.

But as indicated in Notley’s Oct. 3 speech, the Alberta NDP seems to assume that the battle for hearts and minds has been concluded, and that social licence has been attained.

Winter says there’s a lot banked on that assumption.

“I think it would be really politically costly for the Alberta NDP if the federal government decides not to approve Trans Mountain,” she says. “The issue is that I’m not convinced that Alberta implementing a carbon tax is really going to change opinions on whether or not the oilsands are bad. I don’t think that moving to a broad-based carbon tax really buys that much more.”

Image: Alberta Premier Rachel Notley. Photo: Premier of Alberta via Flickr

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As climate change is fingered as a culprit behind the early rash of forest fires across northern and western Canada, experts say the most prudent approach at this stage is to, whenever possible, let the fires burn.

It’s a grim situation. But those studying the issue say the human toll of wildfire needs to be balanced against the reality that vulnerable forests are going to burn either way — especially given the mounting pressures presented by climate change.

“The question becomes, if we’ve got areas where fire can burn, the most responsible thing to do ecologically, fiscally and for long-term health is to let those fires burn,” said Toddi Steelman, executive director of the School of Environment and Sustainability at the University of Saskatchewan.

“If we don’t let them burn, we have to pay that account down the line … the forest will burn eventually.”

Worst Forest Fire Season in B.C. History

It’s not an easy thing to say in the current context. Nearly 2.5 million hectares have burned in Canada already this fire season, which likely has several more weeks to go.

In what is being called the biggest exodus in Saskatchewan’s history, more than 13,000 people have been forced to flee their homes (a figure that’s tripled in just five days). Firefighters from as far away as Australia and New Zealand are being shuttled to western Canada to spell off exhausted local responders.

Like Saskatchewan, B.C. has already outspent its $63 million firefighting budget on the worst forest fire season in the province’s history.

When Boreal Burns, Less Flammable Trees Grow Back

Jill Johnstone has spent several years investigating the effects of wildfire on the boreal forests in Alaska, Yukon and the Northwest Territories. One of her discoveries is that in areas where forest fires burn severely and frequently — a growing phenomenon in a warmer, drier climate — the typical black spruce trees that characterize much of the boreal are replaced by leafy deciduous species such as aspen.

While black spruce are described as being “born to burn” because of special adaptations, including cones that only release seeds after a blaze, fire moves less easily through broad-leaf forests.

“As the climate is warming, we’re having more frequent extreme fire weather that leads to big, active fire years. And the fires that burn under those conditions seem to trigger parts of the landscape to shift to this less flammable vegetation type,” Johnstone, an associate professor at the University of Saskatchewan, told DeSmog Canada.

“The idea is that maybe it won’t just be a runaway train where the more the climate warms, the more fire we get,” she said.

Adapting to Climate Risks: Large Fires ‘Catalysts for Change’

How to prevent an endless cycle of destructive climate change impacts is a burning question for anyone working on fire, drought and other problems associated with extreme heat. Johnstone describes her findings as both controversial and profoundly important for how we understand and choose to adapt to the growing risks.

The boreal forests, stretching from the Yukon border to the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, are where the vast majority of wildfire burning takes place. Allowing more of these forests to burn naturally could fundamentally change the boreal ecosystem, from the types of plants that grow there to the animals that call it home.

In the immediate future, this is problematic for the communities and species that depend on the boreal as a source of food and shelter. (Hunters and trappers in northern Saskatchewan are already raising concerns about the effects of fire on their livelihoods.) But over time, a boreal forest dominated by deciduous trees could be less prone to fire and, according to separate research, play an important role in helping cool the planet.

“If large fires are actually a mechanism for resetting the landscape to be less flammable … we need to let large fires burn because they are catalysts of change,” Johnstone said.

Climate Change Driving Factor in Forest Fires

Fire agencies in the Northwest Territories and British Columbia explicitly name climate change as a factor driving heightened fire risks. On its website, even the federal ministry that oversees the development of the oilsands predicts the amount of area burned by forest fires in previous decades could double during this current one, thanks to climate change.

University of Alberta professor Mike Flannigan, a lead researcher on wildfire and climate change, points to temperature as the most important variable driving forest fire risk.

Warmer temperatures (like those predicted by climate models) exacerbate the three conditions needed for fire: dry fuel, an ignition agent like lightning and the hot, dry, windy weather that propels fire across a landscape.

“We need a 15 per cent increase in precipitation to compensate for every [extra] degree of warmth. And models don’t show this as likely to happen,” Flannigan told DeSmog Canada.

Flannigan expressed skepticism that the solution is as simple as allowing more fire-tolerant aspens to overtake the boreal forest. But he echoed Johnstone’s prescription to let the fires burn as naturally and freely as possible.

Which Fires Should Be Allowed to Burn?

In fact, several provinces and territories have taken this approach in recent years, following what Flannigan describes as a “monitor and manage” strategy of selectively intervening in fires that threaten people and developments, resources or species of value.

Fire officials in British Columbia have been taking a “modified response” approach to fires for over a decade, according to Lyle Gawalko, B.C.’s Manager of Fire Prevention. Their policy is to protect, in this order, human health and safety, communities and critical infrastructure, cultural values, watersheds, high value habitat and timber values. 

If a fire starts in an area that’s deemed safe or beneficial to burn and doesn’t threaten these values, officials will simply monitor it to make sure the situation doesn’t become dangerous.

Officials in Saskatchewan have created a policy that explicitly outlines where they will fight fires versus where they will observe and assess as a blaze progresses.

The problem comes in places like Alberta where there’s very little territory that doesn’t have a value on it, Flannigan said.

“It’s almost impossible to let a fire burn without it impacting an oil and gas development, community, or other operation. That’s the problem with co-existing development and fire; it’s hard to let fire take its natural course.”

Science Vs. Politics

Deciding which fires pose a risk is not a simple task for many reasons. Community members as well as local officials in northern Saskatchewan have criticized the government’s policy for leaving remote communities vulnerable.

These competing needs and the public’s fear of fire — and resulting desire to have it extinguished — make the question of how fires are fought not just technical but sociopolitical.

“If I’m a mayor of a small town, of course I’m going to be doing my job as mayor to lobby to get more resources on my fire. But they need to remember is that they may be one of many, many places that need those resources,” said Steelman of the University of Saskatchewan.

“The politics is different from what the science would suggest and that’s not unusual in these kinds of debates. And I think we can expect that into the future as well.”

Given that climate impacts are already influencing the strength and spread of wildfire in Canada, Johnstone highlights the urgent need for a different conversation about how to approach the problem and possible solutions.

“If we acknowledge that we can’t suppress every fire in the landscape and then take that one step further and come to terms with the idea that fire may actually be beneficial in terms of long-term landscape resilience, there needs to be a better dialogue with the public about what our plan is about how we’re going to fight fires.”

Photo: Boulder Creek Wildfire by B.C. Wildfire Service

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It’s finally happening: after years of stalling by the Progressive Conservatives, Alberta’s new NDP government announced Thursday it will double the province’s meager carbon levy on large emitters by 2017.

Industry and environmentalists alike welcomed the decision, while also saying it doesn’t go far enough. 

Currently, any facility that emits more than 100,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases per year must reduce its emissions by 12 per cent below typical performance or pay $15 per tonne for emissions over the baseline. By 2017, the new framework will require companies to lower emissions by 20 per cent below typical performance, with a $30-per-tonne levy for emissions above that target.

“It’s not going to drive the meaningful reductions or give the market incentives that we need,” said Ed Whittingham, executive director of the Pembina Institute.

Pembina advocates for a $40-per-tonne levy with a 40 per cent emissions reduction target. Whittingham said the NDP had three options given the circumstances: let the regulation expire at the end of the month, kick the can down the road by renewing the current framework (as previous governments often did) or actually make some changes.

Dan Woynillowicz, director of policy at Clean Energy Canada, said the most impressive element of the announcement was its decisiveness.

“The previous government has been talking about changing the SGER, or changing the price, or changing the coverage for several years,” he said. “Within a matter of weeks, this government has come in and said: ‘We’re going to do that, we’re going to make that change.’ ”

Cenovus Wants Economy-Wide Carbon Price

Brett Harris, media lead at Cenovus Energy — which has historically supported a price on carbon — says the company is pleased the government has provided clarity on the issue. However, he says “in an ideal world” the company would like to see a pan-Canadian or pan-North American carbon pricing regime to create a “level playing field.”

Shell Canada also welcomed the new rules.

Despite support from energy companies, the concept of a carbon tax has consistently been ridiculed by Canada’s federal government.

Dale Beugin, director of research at Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission, acknowledges a national or international carbon tax should be the end goal, but notes it’s a difficult thing to achieve and that reform must happen incrementally.

“It’s great that the big industrial emitters are priced by the SGER, but that’s not the only emissions in the economy: a good carbon pricing policy is going to be broad as well as stringent, Beugin said. “You want to make sure you’re going after the small emitters, the vehicles, the buildings, the process emissions from waste and agriculture.”

How Alberta’s Carbon Levy Works

There are 103 large emitters in Alberta. While most of the sites are gas plants, a great majority of emissions come from seven coal power plants and five oilsands mines/upgraders. Such companies have three options if they exceed the target: buy carbon offsets, use Alberta Emission Performance Credits (similar to carbon offsets but rewarded based on performance) or contribute to the Climate Change and Emissions Management Fund, which funds climate change projects.

“What [this change] is going to do is drive more money into offsets in the tech fund,” Whittingham said. “There are some greenhouse gas savings or benefits to be had from that.”

Andrew Leach to Head Climate Change Panel

In addition to announcing changes to the carbon levy, Environment Minister Shannon Phillips reported the government is forming a climate change panel, chaired by Andrew Leach, the University of Alberta environmental economist.

"Andrew Leach is pretty much the first person I'd choose for that gig, so good job,” said Chris Turner, the author of The Geography of Hope and The Leap.

According to a feature Leach wrote for Maclean’s, the panel will examine a wide assortment of potential actions. It will deliver a report to the government in the fall, prior to Premier Rachel Notley’s trip to Paris in December to attend the United Nations climate change summit.

Many options will need to be considered. Whittingham says the province must find a way to phase out coal-fired electricity, ensure renewable energy fills a fair share of that void and implement energy efficiency programs, as well as deal with growing emissions from the oilsands.

Photo: Kris Krug via Flickr

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image Credit: WhitneyH / Flickr

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It was less than six months ago that a handful of energy companies resorted to selling off portions of their stake in the oil patch after failing to garner the kind of investor support they needed to fund major projects.

The costs of development in the oilsands is increasing due to material and labour shortages in Alberta and limited real estate. According to reports by the Petroleum Human Resources Council of Canada, the industry is effectively innovating itself out of the labour market, expanding beyond what the available pool of skilled labour can support.

Development costs are also escalating as the environmental toll of extracting and upgrading tar-like bitumen from the region has put both policy makers and the public on edge.

Jean-Michel Gires, the former CEO of the Canadian unit of France's Total SA, says crude from the oilsands is "among the most expensive oil" in the world to produce. Yet, development continues, leading some experts to claim that the oilsands costly production still doesn't accurately reflect the true costs associated with the resource.

Rising Costs

Royal Dutch Shell's Athabasca Oil Sands Project costs jumped from an estimated $3.5 billion in 2005 to $14.3 billion in 2010 due to unforseen expenses. 

Even without environmental regulations concerning waste, companies are already spending billions on tailings reduction technology simply because they’re running out of space. Tailings ponds currently cover more than 176 square kilometres of the region.

The Kearl Mine, an Exxon-owned Imperial Oil project, cost $12.9 billion in its first phase – more than 40 percent over the expected price tag.

The mega-project is intended to produce 600,000 barrels of crude oil per day by 2020. Downgraded from three development phases to two, the Kearl project is expected to produce 110,000 barrels per day by the end of this year.

The mine is already connected to Enbridge’s Cheecham Terminal by the Woodland Pipeline and will begin to test capacity before long. Enbridge quietly received regulatory approval in August of last year to build a $1.3 billion extension of the Woodland Pipeline to accommodate the expected increase in production at Kearl. The project is set to be complete in 2015, the same year Imperial plans to move an additional 110,000 barrels of bitumen per day out of Kearl.

Inflating Investments

According to investment analysts, the solution to the problem, both in terms of money and morale, is to greenlight the various pipeline projects currently under consideration, including proposal to modify existing pipelines such as Enbridge’s Line 9 to eastern Canada. But those pipelines themselves are projected to cost billions of dollars to build.

Moving ahead with such projects has been made easier with a flood of outside investment used to artificially prop up the industry.

One such surge of investment recently came from Warren Buffet. This summer marked the first time one of the world’s largest investors plunged billions into Canadian resource development. Buffet, head of Berkshire Hathaway Inc, has thrown his weight behind Suncor, Canada’s largest oil and gas company.

Ironically, this kind of large-scale investment serves to drive costs up even higher by contributing to inflation.

Counting the Real Costs

It’s unlikely the rising costs of development, no matter how severe, will investment in the oilsands to an end. Yet when it comes to realistic cost accounting for large-scale carbon projects, there are people working on pragmatic solutions.

In spite of the environmental movement’s push for a shift in values, some experts say it’s more likely carbon policy will make the difference.

Dr. Andrew Leach, professor at the Alberta School of Business at the University of Alberta says the rising social cost of tar sands development, as well as meaningful environmental policy changes are contributing to the higher price tags on new projects, but it’s ultimately consumer choices that will determine whether projects in the tar sands remain viable.

To illustrate, Leach uses the example of the car-driven suburb model of living.

“In order to meet at 450 ppm target, we can’t have people living out in the suburbs and driving big cars, but people are still living in the suburbs and buying big cars.” The analogy applies to dirty oil development. It’s not that developers don’t know what’s going on; it’s that they won’t stop until someone makes them.

“That’s sort of at the heart of carbon pricing to say let’s let the market decide what activities make sense given a particular carbon budget.”

From a policy perspective Leach, who spent a year working on policy initiatives with Environment Canada, believes the best thing we can do it is force the industry to internalize the social costs of extracting oil from the ground.

“The social cost of a carbon future, reclamation expenses, water and air pollution – those need to be internal to company decisions, and that can be done in any number of ways,” he said, adding that this is a standard view among economist, despite how popular media portrays the issue.

Matt Horne, Director of Climate Change at the Pembina Institute, says industry regulation and policy changes are already making renewables more competitive. Combined with success stories from various fields within the green energy, the gap between oil and renewable energy is getting smaller. It’s just the policy piece that’s missing.

He says the combination of solid economics and strong environmental policies will make renewables the norm rather than “a few leading examples.” The goal is ultimately to make it cheaper to produce clean energy than it is to extract oil from the ground.

“I think policy can change quickly and change the economic playing field quite quickly.”

Mark Jaccard, professor in the School of Resource Management at Simon Fraser University and author of Sustainability Suspicions, believes that with more attention on those leading examples—particularly the ones closest to home like California and British Columbia—we can make that change sooner rather than later.

“I am amazed that environmentalists all over North America are not talking about California's policies every day and focusing strategic efforts to effect voting support on vulnerable politicians where they do not push for similar policies,” he said in an email interview.

He cited the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, the Renewable Electricity Portfolio Standard and the Vehicle Emissions Standards among others as examples of economic and environmental success.

Jaccard also believes the movement needs to shift its focus from individual projects to the broader issue of the climate. When it comes to particular projects, such as the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline, he says the benefits for the people in power will always outweigh the environmental costs. To create the critical mass necessary for change, we should be focusing on climate change as a global issue, something no one can ignore.

“When did we get good policies implemented? Never when talking about oil sands and oil spills. But yes when we got enough people (probably less than 10 percent of the population) very concerned about climate change. Politicians, ever watchful of swing voters, had to pay attention.” Environmentalists should also be fighting for trade penalties on imports from jurisdictions that are still using the atmosphere as a dumping ground, he adds.

“Only in this way can environmentalists put together a coherent argument for action. Only in this way can we effectively counter the fossil fuel arguments like, one, we need the Chinese to act, two, our emissions are only a small percentage, three, we won't stop needing oil tomorrow, etc.”  

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.