Environment Committee on May 13th, 2009

[Don Thompson]

I'll start by saying that, as far as my members and I are concerned, RAMP is a credible, competent program. It is operated by competent professionals who are working to the best of their ability.

I think if you read that report—I'll let Mr. Kuzmic comment on it—the first block of discussion is about how RAMP should be commended because it is unique, far-reaching, and one of the best that they are aware of.

Obviously, like any review, they will find comments, and that's what I want Mr. Kuzmic to talk about. But I want to set it in context that this is a program operated by competent professionals.

[Fred Kuzmic]

Thank you very much for the question. It is a really good question.

The RAMP peer review was carried out in 2003. It was based on a five-year snapshot of RAMP monitoring from 1997 to 2003. The recommendations provided through the peer review panel were considered by RAMP, and I think 90% of those have been incorporated into the program since the 2003 review.

There are a number of peer reviews scheduled for this year as well, to continually improve our program, and we welcome all sorts of studies and any other information that can help us better analyze the information we collect.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much.

We'll move on now to Mr. Warawa.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being here. Just as an opening comment, this is a multi-party panel and this is our third day. We have unique perspectives, but we appreciate you being here and providing information to enlighten each of us.

I'm sure there will be a lot of very interesting follow-up dialogue in our committee as we head back to Ottawa, particularly looking at Quebec and the suggestion that all energy being created by water should be charged for that water. We'll see how that would affect Quebec in terms of Mr. Ouellet's suggestion that all the energy created in Quebec by water would all be charged. There will be an interesting discussion that will happen, I am sure.

I also want to continue asking about RAMP. We've heard, right from day one, concerns about RAMP from first nations, from aboriginal groups, that they are not happy with RAMP. They were involved. They shared that the membership is mainly made up of industry, that industry meets with government representatives and decisions are made before the panel even meets. So my question is on the makeup of RAMP.

In a briefing document I have here, it says that it is industry-funded, of course, which it should be, but the membership is multi-stakeholder, to monitor the oil sands. Membership includes members from local and aboriginal communities; environmental NGOs; governmental agencies, municipal, provincial and federal; and of course, industry representatives. Do you have NGOs as part of that membership, and aboriginal groups?

[Don Thompson]

I'm going to let Mr. Kuzmic go over the membership of RAMP, but I'm going to just explain that membership in RAMP is a requirement of operating approvals. That of course dictates that the industry pays, which is a source of contention, but as you point out, that is what would be expected. I don't know any other way around it.

RAMP is also--it's part of our licence requirements--required to be quantitative, science-based, replicable, and auditable. That sets the parameters for what RAMP is. It is compliance monitoring, first and foremost, and has to comply with those key points.

With that, I will turn it over to Mr. Kuzmic.

[Fred Kuzmic]

Thanks, Don.

That is a really good question. RAMP does have multi-stakeholder participation. There are currently 12 funding members of RAMP that are oil sands operators. One member is not an oil sands operator but rather a quarry operator that works in the region, and it is something they want to be part of as well, recognizing the value of the program for their particular operation.

We have first nation membership in Fort McKay First Nation and Mikisew Cree First Nation from Fort Chipewyan, as well as several Métis local individuals who are associated with the program.

With respect to the regulators, we have Alberta Environment, Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, Alberta Sustainable Resource Development, and Alberta Health and Wellness.

From the federal perspective, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Environment Canada, and Health Canada are all members as well.

We have the Northern Lights Regional Health Authority as part of our membership. I'm not sure of the current status of OSEC, the Oil Sands Environmental Coalition.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Do you have any NGOs that are members?

[Fred Kuzmic]

OSEC would be the only one, and I'm not absolutely sure of their membership. Their representation historically has been done with the Pembina Institute, and Pembina has said that they aren't part of that.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Pembina, over the years, has been very active as an NGO on the oil sands. Are they not part of that group?

[Fred Kuzmic]

Initially they were, yes, but they've pulled out recently.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

What year is recently?

[Fred Kuzmic]

It was last year, 2008.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Okay. They'll be witnesses later on. We'll be asking them why they pulled out.

On monitoring, slide 38 shows your study area. How far north does it go?

[Fred Kuzmic]

Currently the program goes up to the Peace-Athabasca delta, so it's right up on the delta, south of the actual Lake Athabasca.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Okay.

We've also heard of fish deformities. When we were up at Fort Chipewyan there was a lot of concern about toxins in the water, that the water isn't safe to drink. I believe they have municipal testing and that testing is determining that the water is safe to drink, but there is a huge concern of the residents in the area that there is a problem with the water, and they particularly point at deformities in fish.

You said you've been doing the monitoring. Does the monitoring of fish go that far north?

[Fred Kuzmic]

No, we don't extend into Lake Athabasca itself. We look at the Athabasca River, primarily, but the Clearwater River as well.

What was mentioned earlier, though, was that there are a lot of migratory fish species that tend to use the river from the lake, so we have captured or have reported recaptures on the tagged fish from the far north--Slave River and the Athabasca lake itself.

So we don't look at the lake per se, but the fish that inhabit that lake use the rivers in certain parts of their life cycle. We catch them then and look for fish health and any abnormalities that we find there.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

When we heard Dr. Schindler yesterday, he raised concern around the lack of access to data from the monitoring by RAMP. I'm not quoting him, but I think he was saying that the data was not made public.

Is the data in your monitoring available to the public?

[Fred Kuzmic]

I guess it depends on what you define as data. The information collected is presented in tables and charts and summarized in the RAMP technical report. That information is available publicly on the RAMP website, which is RAMP-Alberta.org. It has all the technical reports from 1997 through to 2008, so that information is available there.

With respect to the individual data points, RAMP has an extensive database that has approximately 2.3 million data points of information collected since 1997. That information is available for members and members' use, and if someone needs access to that information, they can gain it by access through one of the members and a data-sharing agreement.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Do I have a moment longer?

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I think you're on a good line of questioning, so why don't you take a few more minutes.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Thank you.

We've heard concerns about tailings pond leakage, again in our last two days. There's actually a press release that has just gone out from Pembina, saying, Their failure to act has created severe risks, ranging from contamination by leaking tailings lakes [so the ponds, which they're calling lakes] to the collapse of fisheries.

When we flew over, we saw the ponds. We saw the ponds' perimeter drainage to collect anything, and then, below that, taking out the groundwater and pumping it back into the tailings ponds to ensure there was no leakage into the Athabasca River. But we've heard from aboriginal groups and from, now, a press release from an NGO that the tailings ponds are leaking.

Is there any evidence, through RAMP or any other signs, that the ponds are leaking?

[Don Thompson]

Before I ask Mr. Mackenzie to give some details, I want to assure the panel that the tailings ponds are carefully engineered structures that are built by highly competent geotechnical and other engineers. They are non-trivial structures. This industry takes tailings ponds very seriously in terms of their design and operation and reclamation. The people who design and operate these ponds are fully aware of the need to protect ground and surface water in the design and operation and ultimate reclamation.

With that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Mackenzie.

[Ian Mackenzie]

That is a good question. Everything leaks, of course. The tailings ponds that you're speaking of, with the capture wells as well as the perimeter ditches, are specifically designed to return that leakage back into the process-affected recycle stream.

There is one discontinued tailings pond in the process of being reclaimed right now that I'm aware of. That's pond 1 at Suncor. There has historically been estimated to be very small leakage directly into the Athabasca River from that, and I believe there's been about two decades' worth of studies, required by Alberta Environment and carried out by various researchers, as well as by Suncor, showing that there's absolutely no effect from that legacy pond.

I'm not aware of any other leakages from other ponds. In our environmental impact assessments--of course, sometimes we get criticized for being so conservative--we do show that very minute amounts of seepage can potentially reach receiving streams, but as Alberta Environment has very clearly said in recent publications, they are not allowing any seepage to occur, and the capture of all seepage is expected. Monitoring wells that are in place and will be required by Alberta Environment will ensure that if there is seepage detected, that seepage will have to be returned to the tailings pond.

[The Vice-Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Mr. Mackenzie.

Before we move on to our second panel, I have two very specific questions that you can perhaps answer.

We run into a lot of acronyms in these reports. What does “PCA” mean? Do you know what I'm talking about? They talked about a study on the PCA. Does that ring a bell?

[Ian Mackenzie]

I believe it's principal component analysis, which is a type of statistical treatment.