Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's good to be back. I enjoyed my time at this committee when I was sitting in for my colleague, Ms. Collins.
I know this study is very close to your heart, Mr. Chair. It's good to see it continuing.
I was with the committee for some of the testimony around the Kearl oil sands project and the spills and seepage into the environment from that project. It was extremely troubling to hear the testimony from the Athabasca Fort Chipewyan First Nation about the devastating health impacts that they've suffered downstream and to get a sense that the regulators who are responsible for overseeing and protecting the environment seem to be pretty wholly captured by the industry.
I know that Ms. Olsgard has been before the committee before talking about the seepage from the tailings ponds.
Today, Ms. Olsgard, you've brought in a new aspect of concern, which has to do with the release of waste-water effluent from these projects. Listening to your testimony made me think about my home community of Smithers. It's a small municipality of about 5,000 people on the bank of the Bulkley River. They have an old municipal waste-water treatment plant. For a number of years, they have been struggling with compliance with federal regulations around waste-water discharge. They've been getting repeated letters from the federal government warning them that they're out of compliance and threatening consequences if they don't build better infrastructure and treat their effluent better. They're still waiting on a grant from the same government that's sending the letters, but that's a separate issue.
It just seems like the federal regulator, in this case, is being very proactive with very small communities that have limited financial resources.
Are we seeing the same kind of proactive regulation when it comes to these huge oil sands companies that are releasing all of this waste-water effluent into the rivers of the oil sands region?