The most gripping fact about the business of extracting oil from the
sands of northeastern Alberta is that no one seems to know how bad it
is going to be for the boreal forest. Even less is known about the
potential impact on the local First Nations and Metís people who live
there. University of Alberta ecologist David Shindler believes that the
boreal forest is already in dire straits. This is troubling news: the
oil sands industry claims that less than two percent of the reserves in
the area is being mined. Shindler writes that the impact of the carte
blanche for development in the north is an assault on the boreal
ecology.
The government of Alberta, on the other hand, portrays the oil sands
industry as a commercial success story, won through the hard work of
early visionaries. Sitting in the multimillion dollar “Oil Sands
Discovery Centre” above Fort McMurray, I watch a short film about the
history of the oil industry in this region. The story goes like this:
some people noticed that tarry puddles of oil bubbled forth from the
ground. Word got out and, by the turn of the century, enterprising
engineers and entrepreneurs paddled down the Athabasca River to seek
their fortune.
Unfortunately, the oil was exceedingly difficult to separate from the
sand with which it was tightly bound. Now that we’ve learned to extract
the crude oil profitably, the industry is set to produce two million
barrels of oil per day by the end of this decade. The region is thought
to contain 1.7 to 2.5 trillion barrels of oil. Everybody who is anybody
in the oil and gas world has a finger in the sand.
The problem with this narrative is that it is a remarkably biased
version of history. Based on this version, it appears reasonable that
the aboriginal people of Fort McKay - surrounded by over a dozen
existing and planned oil sands projects - should live in trailer parks
while billions of dollars are pocketed by faceless investors from
around the world. Chipewyan, Cree, and Metís people who lived along the
Athabasca River long before the arrival of cars, oil cartels, and
international capital are now dealing with an unprecedented industrial
experiment. Many of the elders display a quiet resignation. A hundred
years of colonial governance has taken its toll. Emma Faichney, a Cree
elder, remarked that “when the [oil sand] plants opened it was good for
jobs but it still ruined our country. We won’t have fish or berries to
eat. The animals will be unfit to eat and we won’t be able to drink the
water. Our lifestyle will be different. We’ll have to live like
whites.” Nearly everyone notes the unbelievably rapid pace of
development, the Byzantine policies and studies that are supposed to
make sense of all this, as well as their own inability to effect
changes. In spite of this, the bush remains integral to residents of
McKay, who continue to hunt, trap, fish, and enjoy what the land has to
offer.
At a recent conference in Toronto, Mike Ashar, the executive vice
president of Suncor (the oldest company currently operating in the oil
sands), delivered an upbeat speech to an audience of investors. Ashar
says Suncor is the greenest and most responsible company in town. While
it has in fact made significant concessions to the issues brought forth
by ecologists, it is also the largest mining operation in North
America, producing a quarter million barrels of oil per day.
There has been almost no synthesis of data and critical work pertaining
to the cumulative effects of industry on the boreal landscape. While
there are countless pages of data, conference proceedings, and expert
statements, there are few tangible results and recommendations. This is
troubling, as the provincial government recognizes that there is an
“unprecedented pace of development” in the region.
Addressing the concerns of the Fort McKay community, Bertha Ganter, a
Chipewyan elder and environmental consultant, noted in a recent
conference that “the community is saddened in seeing so much land being
lost. They wish to leave some of our cultural ways for future
generations to enjoy and pass on. They know that when all the mineable
ore has been extracted, the McKay peoples will still be there. They
have survived off these lands for thousands of years, and they want
lands protected and maintained to continue to sustain traditional
resource harvesting such as they had before industrialization.”
Suncor’s shareholders are connected to the Athabasca River and the
people living on its banks only through nebulous financial
transactions. They are trading on the environmental and social
integrity of an out-of-the-way place and a marginalized people. While
the company assures the world that all is well in the oil sands, there
is no definitive word on the cumulative impacts in 2010 of the
projected 4.6 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions and 480,000 tons
of volatile organic compounds that will be injected into the atmosphere
each year. These emissions are in addition to the extensive
fragmentation of the forests, the displacement of hundreds of acres of
soil by surface mines, vast amounts of land that lie unreclaimed, and
the erasure of indigenous history through the destruction of traplines,
berry picking sites, fishing holes, and medicinal plants. Under the
swell of international capital, federal proclamations, and provincial
subsidies, the voices of the few Cree, Chipewyan, and Metís elders are
carefully ignored and isolated.
In the end, degradation of all aspects of life at the heart of the oil
sands has been so acute that the Fort McKay First Nation is considering
the relocation of its community to a small reserve over a hundred
kilometers to the northwest, one that has no road access and little
development activity.
The authors would like to thank those whose words we have used in this publication, especially Emma Faichney and Bertha Ganter.
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