Evidence of meeting #27 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was community.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Thank you.
I have a twofold question to ask you. Do the upgraders that refine the bitumen from the oil sands emit more or less greenhouse gas than those that refine conventional light crude? Do the oil sands upgraders use more oil in order to refine, which would make them heavier polluters, in terms of water, than light crude refineries?
Author, As an Individual
The refining of bitumen is a two-stage process. Number one, you have to upgrade the resource, so you have to take some of the carbon out of it and you have to add hydrogen to it. That's known as upgrading, and there are several upgraders in the Fort McMurray region, and, yes, they are primary sources of acidic emissions.
Once you've refined the bitumen you have a product called synthetic crude. That product then needs to go through a complex refinery where you have to deal with the acids, the sulphur, and heavy metals in the synthetic crude.
So it's a two-stage process. Light oil is only a one-stage process. So, yes, we are looking at two to three times more air pollution than you would if you were refining light oil.
Author, As an Individual
Yes, and therefore you are using more water. But I cannot give you the exact figures for how much more water is used in the upgrading process and then in the refinery process. But the upgrading and refining of bitumen is water intensive too.
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Mr. Nikiforuk, I have heard that tetachlorides and benzenes can pollute a body of water with as little as one part per million of benzene to water. Do you believe that could happen in the water table or in a river?
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
This is an area you know well. Have you ever heard of a pipeline failure in Canada that would have resulted in crude oil spills?
Author, As an Individual
Pipeline breaks are a regular occurrence throughout the province. Accidents happen in the oil patch all the time. Some of them are due to corrosion, some due to machinery bumping into pipelines--there are lots of reasons why pipelines fail.
There have been a number of pipeline failures in the Fort McMurray region. I don't believe they've been well documented and I don't believe the information is as transparent as it should be.
Bloc
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Let's take it from there. We export virtually millions of barrels per day of water to the United States through pipelines. I will quote you, and I would like to hear your comments afterwards. You said the following:
The pipelines will determine the nation's economic future by accelerating the pace of tar sands exploitation and liquidation. This will also return Canada to its roots as a provider of raw, undervalued staples. ...the export of 400,000 barrels per day represents...eighteen thousand jobs.
Why do you believe that the export of crude oil to the United States makes Canada lose jobs?
Author, As an Individual
I'm talking specifically about the export of bitumen. About 60% of the oil we now export is synthetic crude, which then will be refined in the United States. The other 40% is raw bitumen. So it will then be both upgraded and refined in the United States.
When you export raw bitumen you have said you are not going to be responsible for upgrading and adding value to this resource here in Canada. According to studies done by the Alberta Federation of Labour and by the paperworkers' union, the export of 400,000 barrels a day of bitumen is equivalent to exporting 18,000 jobs in the upgrading and refining industry in Canada.
Given the lack of public policy on this issue, Canada now faces the prospect that it will become an exporter of raw bitumen, primarily raw bitumen, to the United States. In that process we'll be exporting jobs, and these jobs will be created at refineries throughout the United States as opposed to refineries here in Canada. That is a critical public policy issue.
Christian Ouellet Bloc Brome—Missisquoi, QC
Mr. Nikiforuk, why do you say that the Canadian crude market from the oil sands will decrease from 36% to 29%? You also said that elsewhere. Why do you think that Enbridge is in the process of developing a pipeline towards Montreal and Portland, if that is not financially profitable?
Author, As an Individual
I can't give you a good answer to that question. I'm not familiar with that issue.
Conservative
NDP
Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
Thank you both, Andrew Nikiforuk and Dr. O'Connor. I would also like to give greetings on behalf of our committee to Mrs. O'Connor, who, I understand, has worked in the clinic with Dr. O'Connor. We appreciate her coming all the way here as well.
Dr. O'Connor, you've answered a number of the questions already of fellow members of the committee, but I'm wondering whether you could elaborate a bit more on what has and has not been done yet in studying the potential health impacts.
I'm advised that in January 2008 the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation petitioned the federal commissioner for sustainable development and raised concerns about the water and sediment contamination downstream from the tar sands facilities and concerns about how the contaminants may or may not affect our health. They called for peer-reviewed toxicological study of the effects of exposure to toxins in the communities in the lower Athabasca River region.
What is your opinion of this? Do you feel that the studies that have been undertaken by the Alberta Cancer Board fulfill the need, or would additional work need to be done to do a full, peer-reviewed toxicological study?
Physician, As an Individual
That study followed Dr. Timoney's presentation in November 2007 to the community, with his documentation of the toxins that his analysis had detected. Dr. Timoney's presentation to the community was followed, probably a day or two later, by Health Canada's advising the community that pregnant women and children should not eat fish from the lake or the river, and that anybody else should do so more than once a week only at their own risk. They also warned the community to pull their kids from the water.
The lake is their recreation ground, their playground. There is nothing else really to do in Fort Chip. Their hockey arena is almost rebuilt after collapsing a few years ago, but generations have played in the lake. That was a major shock, and it was more or less parallel with the community's being told that there was no problem. So you can't eat the fish, you can't play in the water, but there is no problem.
I think their call for a study is absolutely spot on, and to my knowledge, there has been nothing done about it. The Alberta Cancer Board suggestions are very useful, but within their terms of reference they didn't and couldn't touch on possible etiologies of the cancers they had identified in the community.
NDP
Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
What would be involved in a peer-reviewed toxicological study?
Physician, As an Individual
That is a good question. I would imagine, and I think Andrew would probably be able to add to this, that it would involve including what has already been documented by the likes of Dr. Timoney and Dr. David Schindler from the University of Alberta. It would also need a fairly in-depth analysis of the traditional foods that the people in Fort Chip subsist on, and a fairly substantial and credible biological monitoring system, set up not just with people living in the community but with people who have lived there most of their lives and have left within an agreed period of time to live elsewhere. Typically they would move south to Fort McMurray.
NDP
Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
I was advised just this past week by the parliamentary secretary for Health Canada, in response to an earlier question that I had asked of the minister, that the department in the last few weeks has travelled to Fort Chipewyan and has undertaken that it may undertake some kind of health study.
Have you, as their community physician, been consulted, and would you have any advice for them, if Health Canada approached you on how that study might be undertaken?
Physician, As an Individual
I was aware that there was a visit planned, chiefly by Alberta Health Services, I believe, with some representation in one form or other from Health Canada. The meeting has taken place. The issues laid before the health board in the community basically involved their being asked what they thought the next step should be.
I was asked to contribute to a possible proposal from Fort Chip. Of course, at very short notice it is very difficult to do it justice. The meeting has taken place, and I believe Fort Chip is waiting for a response to their re-request for commencement of a comprehensive health study.
NDP
Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
Are you aware of the community being approached, or have you been approached by any others who may be suggesting they might fill the gap and help to finance such a study?
Physician, As an Individual
It's funny you should ask. When the Oscar-shortlisted documentary Downstream premiered in Canada in Fort Chipewyan in March of this year, we were invited up to the community hall. At the end of the meeting, I was approached by a representative of a major stakeholder in the tar sands. Basically he said, “We realize we haven't done everything the right way and we want to be part of the solution. Would you be willing to work with Health Canada and Alberta Health, and would you be willing to spearhead a baseline health study?” They call it “baseline”, but a health study of the community.
Of course I agreed. I said that no matter what has happened in the past with Health Canada or Alberta Health, they're still the best-positioned. They have the resources, they have the manpower, they have the history, documentation. They are very well-perched to participate in a very significant way in such a study. At the present time, I'm waiting on some correspondence back.
This was a big surprise. In fact there have been some discussions with the community about this, and the response so far from the community has been very positive.
NDP
Linda Duncan NDP Edmonton Strathcona, AB
For my last question, either Andrew Nikiforuk or Dr. O'Connor could answer. There have been a number of health reviews in Alberta over time, of the sour gas industry, coal fires, and so forth, because of similarly related health concerns. But there has been a bias against undertaking epidemiological work.
As I understand, a toxicological study—I'm a lawyer, not a scientist—a proper toxicological and baseline study, would require that you have the baseline information on what's in the environment and what may injure the environment, and then you also need historic information on health records and health suffering, and then an epidemiological study....
Anyway, I would appreciate feedback from both of you on the adequacy of past studies on these kinds of relationships in Canada or Alberta and on what would be needed to go forward. Do we have the correct information to actually proceed with this study?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative James Bezan
I'd ask that comments in reply be brief, because Ms. Duncan's time has run out.
Author, As an Individual
I think we need several studies. I think we need a study that looks at what's in the country food in the region, we need a study looking at what's in the air, we need a study that looks at what people are being exposed to when they work in the tar sands. There's a broader health issue here that affects not just aboriginal people downstream but also affects the tens of thousands of people who are working directly in this project. We need not just one big study but several studies to answer a number of critical questions.