Showing posts with label Environment Committee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Environment Committee. Show all posts

Friday, February 21, 2014

Tarsands tailing ponds leaking; scientist muzzled


Federal study confirms oilsands tailings found in groundwater, river

The least surprising thing about this CP story on Environment Canada research indicating water from tarsands tailings ponds is leaching into groundwater and seeping into the Athabasca River is the by now depressingly familiar way the lead Environment Canada scientist was muzzled from speaking about it.

FirstNews of the study, published here in the Environmental Science and Technology journal in January, followed up by a good outline of the study from the CP reporter.

Second, muzzling of the lead scientist by an Environment Canada media relations guy who nonetheless provides the reporter with an opinion of his own :
"Environment Canada said it was unable to provide an interview with the report's main author, Richard Frank.
In an email, department spokesman Danny Kingsberry downplayed its findings.
despite the study's published conclusion that :
"These samples included two of upward flowing groundwater collected < 1 m beneath the Athabasca River, suggesting oil sands process-affected groundwater is reaching the river system."
This is apparently what EC spokesy Danny Kingsberry does for a living.

Third : No problem however getting interview quotes from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers that "the quality of water in the Athabasca River remains good" and 
"While the research technique used in this study shows some potential, further detailed work is required to evaluate its accuracy and adequacy for tracking oil sands process water." 
All of which reminded me of that parliamentary Environment Committee that destroyed the results of its own 18 month study of the tarsands pollution and water three and a half years ago. 
Dr. David Schindler, founding director of the Experimental Lakes Area project, had just testified about his own damning research into airborne tarsands contaminants found in the snow pack along the Athabasca River. He explained his project was "set up to examine the claim of industry and the Alberta government that no pollution from the oil sands industry gets into the Athabasca River."  
He further offered his opinion that oil companies' reports on contaminants are duly submitted to Environment Canada but EC is being muzzled and prevented from making the findings public -- after which the Environment Committee went in camera for the next seven sessions before destroying their report to the public and agreeing to cease their study of the oil sands and Canada's water resources altogether. 

Most of the members of that committee are still sitting in the House, including Justin Trudeau who I hear is giving quite a lot of interviews lately. Maybe some enterprising journo/accredited blogger could ask him wtf happened there. 
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Friday, July 22, 2011

Feds unveil "world class" tarsands PR monitoring plan


This week saw our federal, provincial and territorial energy ministers, minus Ontario, trot out a joint communique describing the tarsands as "sustainable and responsible", even as the Cons were simultaneously slashing the federal Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency budget by 43% and its staff by 33%.

Then yesterday Enviro Minister Peter Kent announced "a world class environmental monitoring plan" for the tarsands, based on recommendations from Bruce Carson and the Independent Oil Sands Advisory Panel.

The Toronto Star :
Environment Minister Peter Kent hopes a comprehensive new plan for monitoring the impact of the Alberta oilsands will boost the damaged reputation of the industry abroad.
“It will provide the facts and the science to defend the product which some abroad are threatening to boycott.”
“There is already a great deal of disinformation and misinformation both within Canada and abroad and we’re seeing it being used in a variety of ways — sometimes for a variety of purposes — to discriminate against the product of a great Canadian natural resource.”
Kent said he hoped the monitoring program would help alleviate concerns in Washington and speed up the approvals process.
Presumably Kent means speeding up the KeystoneXL pipeline.approvals process in Washington but gosh, he sure is pretty darn certain his new objective scientific monitoring plan is going to present the tarsands in a good light, isn't he?

And say, was it only a year ago that the Standing Committee on Environment review (6 Cons, 3 Libs, 2 Bloc, 1 NDP) considered the scientific testimony presented to its review of the tarsands to be so volatile and divisive that the committee held its last seven meetings behind closed doors before opting to scuttle its own investigation and destroy all copies of its draft report?

Maybe Kent's world class environmental monitoring plan could start by looking into whatever scared the crap out of them.
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Friday, August 20, 2010

No science, please, we're the tar sands

Remember that two year Environment Committee study on the tarsands that was ultimately shredded because the four parties at the table couldn't agree on the wording of the witnesses' testimony? The Lib members of that committee have now released their own report on the testimony and as Andrew Nikiforuk reports at The Tyee, it is "scathing".
~ Athabasca River is being polluted
~12 barrels of freshwater required to produce one barrel of crude
~world's largest man-made dams contain 170 square kilometres of toxic mining waste and they're leaking
~steam plants could affect aquifers over an area the size of Florida, using 3½ to 6 barrels of groundwater to extract one barrel of bitumen
Most alarming is the report's contention that science-based policy has been replaced by "bureaucratic compromise", with the federal government entirely abrogatiing its responsibility to monitor and protect our water supplies. The Alberta government just flat out refused to appear before the committee at all.

You're shocked I'm sure.

Wait. Did I say our water supplies?
A year ago Alberta Energy spokesman Tim Markle said : "The Chinese takeover is good news for Alberta."

He was referring to tarsands in northern Alberta being developed by the Chinese state investment fund in partnership with Calgary-based Penn West Energy Trust. China National Petroleum Company obtained 11 oilsands leases and the Chinese Offshore Oil Corporation invested $150 million in Calgary-based Meg Energy. Sinopec has bought into Syncrude. PetroChina, also state-owned, holds a 60% majority stake in two oilsands projects, and has also signed a memorandum with Enbridge to take up to half the space on its proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline from Alberta to the port of Kitimat in BC.

In comments under Nikiforuk's Tyee article, commenter Ed Deak weighs in :
The opposition can jump up and down, they won't get anywhere, because they're attacking the effects and not the causes.
Attacking other political parties, this is also true for BC, and anywhere on Earth, is a waste of time, because politicians are nothing more than pimp/executioners of and for the criminal neoclassical market economic economic theory, being taught in our universities as a "science", that's destroying the Earth and humanity.
Unless our politicians will one day get enough gumption together to attack the causes
they're part of the problem, regardless of the hot air they're blowing.
The tar sands crime wave is part of the "growth" and the "GDP", without any deductions for damages and no politician would dare to question it, as it would bring panic to the almighty stockmarkets.
Then, when the Chinese bring back the money we're paying them for killing our manufacturing infrastructure, praised by economists and the WTO, to buy the country up from under our feet with our own money, it is called "wealth creating foreign investment" that helps to pay for the billions spent on "defence".


Afterthought : An Alberta Energy spokesdude says : "The Chinese takeover is good news for Alberta" and yet back in March we were all apparently shocked shocked shocked when CSIS head Richard Fadden casually mentioned China in his remarks about "foreign interference" on "possibly unwitting" Canadian public servants and politicians here in the West.

We pretty much behaved as if we were teenagers horrified to discover that our parents have sex. I mean obviously we know they must have but we don't much like to hear about it. And given the public pillorying Fadden received for it, I don't imagine it will be brought up again.
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Thursday, July 08, 2010

Environment Committee scuttles its own tarsands report

After 18 months of deliberation and listening to expert testimony, the Standing Committee on Environment announced it will scuttle its own investigation of water pollution from the tar sands :

It was agreed, — That the Committee cease its study of the oil sands and Canada's water resources.

It was agreed, — That all circulated copies of the confidential draft report be returned to the Clerk of the Committee and destroyed (paper and electronic version).


It was agreed, — That any member of the Environment Committee be authorized to consult the one original copy of the draft report kept in the Committee Clerk's office.

They can look at it ; you can't.

The last seven committee sessions on the tar sands have been locked to the public.

At the last public session back in March, the committee heard testimony from a scientist who had conducted the first independent research done since 1983 on airborne tar sands contaminants found in the snow pack along the Athabasca River.
Dr. David Schindler from the University of Alberta told the committee that at the 31 locations he had tested :
"Mercury emitted from these plants has increased three-fold in seven years, lead has increased four-fold in six years, and arsenic three-fold in six years as well."
Further, he said that although Environment Canada tests at only one location on the Athabasca, it has come up with the same numbers, as have the oil companies in their own research.
Schindler contends the oil companies' reports on contaminants are duly submitted to Environment Canada but he believes EC is being muzzled and prevented from making the findings public, and the oil companies of course are not obliged to do so on their own.

And that, my friends, was the last public session of the Environment Committee before it went in camera for the next six sessions and decided against making a report to the House, and to us.

Bad enough, if Schindler is correct, that Environment Canada should be prevented from making its findings public on water pollution from the tar sands; now the Environment Committee won't be either. On the up side, Lib MP Francis Scarpaleggia, who spearheaded the investigation, and NDP environment critic Linda Duncan will be producing their own reports.

What an appalling waste of both resources and public trust.

For an idea of where to lay the blame for this debacle, consider that at that last session, Con MP Jeff Watson blew his allotted time for questioning Schindler pointing out that Iggy supports the tar sands and the Bloc leader has personal investments in it. As EFL points out, at least one opposition MP must have voted with the Cons or abstained to terminate this report. So who was it?

Environment Committee :
Chair : James Bezan, Con .............. David McGuinty, Lib
Scott Armstrong, Con..................... Francis Scarpaleggia, Lib
Mark Warawa, Con ....................... Justin Trudeau, Lib
Blaine Calkins, Con ....................... Bernard Bigras, Bloc
Jeff Watson, Con ........................... Christian Ouellet, Bloc
Stephen Woodworth, Con .............. Linda Duncan, NDP
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Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Bill C-311 : Inside the Environment Committee

Last week Iggy vowed to make the environment central to the Liberal platform again.
Today the Libs voted with the Cons to delay passage of the Climate Change Accountability Act by granting the Standing Committee on the Environment yet another extension to study it instead of pass it.
As noted by Pogge this morning :

The bill is identical to one that passed final reading last year but died in the Senate when the last election was called. This version has already passed second reading. Layton wants to push it through before the climate change talks in Copenhagen to send a message that Harper and company, who have been quite happy to sabotage international efforts whenever they can, don't represent the majority of Canadians on this issue. So why are the Liberals suddenly withdrawing support from legislation they've supported on five previous votes?

This is the party that signed us on to the Kyoto Protocol in the first place and then spent a decade or more studying implications without actually doing anything. So does this mean they didn't study the implications of this bill the last five times they voted for it?
Good question. Bill C-133 sets long-term targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 25% below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. It does not prescribe specific measures on how to achieve this ; it just says yes we really mean it this time, not like the other time, and authorizes the government to set penalties for failing to reduce emissions.

Back in April, Lib environment critic and environment committee member David McGuinty pushed to have discussion on the bill deferred until this fall. Then the meetings on Sept 29 and Oct 1 were cancelled because they didn't have a chair. Now they want an extension.

The Standing Committee on the Environment :
6 Cons - Bezan, Braid, Calkins, Jeff Watson, Warawa, Woodworth - all voted against Bill C-311 in April, Calkin absent. [Note : Iggy also absent for the vote]
3 Libs - McGuinty, Scarpeleggia, Trudeau
2 Bloc - Bigras, Ouellet
1 NDP - Linda Duncan

So what's going on in that committee?
Yesterday I listened to the audio of Tuesday's meeting as the committee heard four climate scientists , including Nobel Prize winner and former IPCC Working Group Chair John Stone, speak for two hours on the importance of passing the bill prior to the Copenhagen talks in December. Without it we are not even in the game, the scientists said. We will have no voice there, no credibility. Being scientists, they stuck to explaining sciencey things.

No good, said McGuinty and the Cons, we need solutions and concrete plans. What about waiting to see what happens to Obama's targets? What about the other countries? Where is your specific plan of action for Canada and how much it will cost?

We're scientists, not economists or policy makers, the scientists patiently explained about six freakin' times, noting again the importance of making a start.

"Bill C-311 is a first ingredient - we must begin by setting targets.
Kyoto did not work because we didn't have any legislation in place with which to begin to implement it."
Ok then, said the Cons, just give us your personal opinion on what a solution would look like.

One scientist tells about a Saskatchewan project on carbon capture that he says actually works. Another says that if Canada implements a target to keep temperature increase to 2°C, then we would only lose one year of GDP growth by 2050.

The Cons immediately pounce : "What is your expertise in making this claim? Where are your qualifications in economics?"

And after that the scientists politely declined any further ventures into the Con Catch-22 land of being berated both for not providing policy solutions outside their expertise and also for providing them when badgered into it.

Note to committee : Your credibility as members of an environment committee was not particularly enhanced by bringing up climate change 'skeptics' like Ross McKitrick and Rex Murphy and asking actual climate scientists to address the points you recently read about in the National Post.

And then the meeting ended after approving a budget of $39,650 for further study of Bill C-311.
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Update : Devin .
Upperdate : The vote : 169 to 93, with 8 paired. Bill C-311 now officially mired in committee and unlikely to pass before Copenhagen.
Although all three Lib environment committee members voted with the Cons for the extension as expected - including Stéphane Dion! - 14 Libs broke ranks to vote with the NDP and Bloc against it.

Canadians who give a shit about the environment thank the following Libs for their support:
Scott Andrews, Kirsty Duncan, Andrew Kania, Dominic LeBlanc, Keith Martin, Alexandra Mendez, Shawn Murphy, Anita Neville, Robert Oliphant, Glen Pearson, Mario Silva, Michelle Simson, Alan Tonks, and Francis Valeriote.
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Oct 26 Update : 200 protesters disrupted Question Period today as one by one they stood up and shouted : "I say 311, you say 'sign it' " - before being dragged away. 6 detained; at least one roughed up. Good for them. Probably raised the level of debate in the House several notches.
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Saturday, October 03, 2009

Another First for Canada!


First Place: Canada
"The day’s fossil award goes to Canada for blocking agreement on using 1990 as the base year. Canada is now the only country more focused on finding creative ways to hide their emission increases and make their weak targets look ambitious than solving the climate crisis. Unfortunately, those emissions linger in the atmosphere much longer than Canada’s embarrassment about them."
~ From the Climate Action Network - "a coalition of over 450 NGOs worldwide dedicated to limiting climate change to sustainable levels"- yesterday in Bangkok.
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Harper's 'plan' is to reduce emissions 20% by 2020 using intensity-based targets. Translated, this amounts to a mere 3% reduction below our 1990 levels by 2020. Big whoop say the other countries at the conference.
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Meanwhile back here at home, Bill C311 - the Climate Change Accountability Act establishing 1990 as the base year, is holed up at the Environment Committee (6 Cons, 3 Libs, 2 Bloc, 1 NDP) :
* A long-term target to reduce Canadian greenhouse gas emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050
* A medium-term target to bring emissions 25% below 1990 levels by 2020
First introduced by Jack Layton in 2007, it actually passed in 2008 but then was shelved before it could receive the necessary blessing from the GG when Harper called the 2008 election .
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When reintroduced this session, it narrowly passed 2nd reading on March 31 with 141 Yeas to 128 Nays. All six Con members of the Environment Committee voted against it.
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Amusingly, in the debate in the House, Con Environmental Parliamentary Secretary and Environment Committee member Mark Warawa argued the bill was "probably unconstitutional" and they would prefer to have "a suite of eco-actions" instead. He also boasted that the Cons will give $1.5 billion in taxpayers money over five years to subsidize experiments by the fossil fuel industry in carbon capture and storage.
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Two months till the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen and the Cons are still banking on The Jetsons to save us.
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Just this one time I'll let you use the big crayons.
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