Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
My name is Russell Noseworthy. I work for the Fort McMurray Métis community. It's a community of about 800 people. I'm here today representing them on behalf of President Hansen.
The McMurray Métis are a rights-based indigenous community based in Fort McMurray. Our more than 800 members exercise their constitutionally protected rights throughout northeastern Alberta and elsewhere. Crucial to the exercise of those rights is the use of the region’s extensive waterways, and in particular the Athabasca River. It's the most important one.
Our members regularly hunt, fish and trap in the area downstream from the oil sands mines. As such, we are deeply concerned about the cumulative effects of the oil sands operations on our ability to exercise our rights in the region to hunt, fish and trap, as protected in the Constitution.
The incident at Kearl is very concerning for us. The environmental protection order and the incident itself highlight the serious nature of the regulatory problems in Alberta. The communications issues we have in Alberta around incidents like this really do not have processes. They are written on paper, but they're not followed properly. Therefore, we are constantly at risk of being exposed to contaminants and other dangerous substances that would have drastic effects on human health for the people who live in and around the area. We're very concerned.
Recently, the federal government began a process of trying to engage with our communities in the region on the whole idea of tailings. The tailings issue is a big issue in our region. There are tailings ponds everywhere north of where I live in Fort McMurray. We're here today to highlight that and to stress the importance of the Athabasca River watershed for the people who are there.
The Crown-indigenous working group was proposed as a mechanism for collaboration on the development of potential regulations for the release of water, and would be complemented by some sort of discussion about how that might impact our rights as a community and as indigenous people living there on the river. However, we're extremely concerned. We had requested from that group a process to identify how our rights would be impacted by what's happening and by the changes to the Fisheries Act that are being proposed.
We were not approved for that. We don't really understand how we're going to be impacted because we haven't looked at that. We have no cumulative measure of how we've been impacted in the region. We don't know, from the various operators, how all that accumulation of pollution has been counted and how that impacts the right to hunt, fish, trap and live healthy lives in that region. We don't understand.
We need a cumulative effects impact assessment. We need to understand that. That's the first thing we need in the region. To go along with that cumulative effects assessment, we need to understand how our rights have been impacted.
I'm speaking in the first person. I apologize for that.
We also need to do that right now. We should start today. After we leave this meeting, we should start doing this work—now.
The federal government—the Government of Canada—should start doing that work now. Your duty and your responsibility to me, to everybody around this table and to the indigenous communities that live in that area require that you do so. If you don't, people are going to have their health impacted.
Laila is over there. She lives in the region and I knew her dad. We need to work together here to make sure that we're protecting people in our region. In our region, we are protecting Canada. The economic engine of Canada resides in the oil sands. It's not in Ontario anymore; it's in Alberta.
We need to be responsible. We are on the international stage here. We need to set a good example. If we don't, our children are going to hear about it. We need to protect this place for all generations that are going to come. We need a cumulative impacts assessment of what has happened, and we need a rights assessment to go along with that.
Those are my opening statements for today. Thank you very much.