Environment Committee on Dec. 14th, 2023

[Brad Corson]

We continue to demonstrate the quality of our operations. We continue to demonstrate through extensive sampling that we are not impacting the waterways. We take full responsibility for demonstrating the integrity of our operations.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

What responsibility, Mr. Corson?

[Brad Corson]

I'm not a medical professional, so I'm not in a position to comment on what's required to better understand the source of those cancers.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

As a member of this government and as a Canadian, I would say that the obligation rests solely on the shoulders of Imperial Oil to demonstrate clearly that this is not a communications failure and that leakage ought not to be built into the design of your operations.

Mr. Corson—

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I have to stop you there, unfortunately, because your six minutes are up.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Ms. Pauzé, you may go ahead.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Thank you to the witnesses for being here.

Mr. Corson, my line of questioning will be similar to Mr. van Koeverden's. You said the Kearl mine leak had no adverse impact on the environment or human health. Let me just say, I'm surprised. According to Alberta's regulator, it was merely a communication problem, apparently. I don't agree with that assessment.

In terms of everything that's happened, you said you had taken steps to ensure that indigenous communities were adequately engaged. According to you, the assertion that there have been no adverse impacts is based on assessments by the government and your company. You said some communities had done independent testing. Have you looked at the results of that independent testing?

[Brad Corson]

Yes. In fact, I will clarify that even the testing we do is really done by independent third parties. We have hired indigenous-owned contractors to do all of the sampling, and then those samples are sent to a government-certified third party laboratory. The results of those samples are then returned to the indigenous-owned companies to process the results and conclusions. That information is ultimately shared back to us, and we share it broadly with all the communities—

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

I see. I understand the flow of your communications.

[Brad Corson]

—so it's very independent.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

I want to talk about a report.

It's called “Third-Party Sampling Data — September (as of November 17)”. It's on the Alberta Energy Regulator's website, and it says that the two main water sampling sites are in the north and northeastern investigation areas. However, those investigation areas are not where the spill of 5.3 million litres occurred, referred to as release 2. Those areas are actually the site of what you called a small seepage in February 2023.

Why did your sampling exclude the leak locations that triggered the order under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act?

[Brad Corson]

We're not excluding any areas. In fact, over the last seven or eight months, we have gathered over 2,000 samples from approximately 500 locations, both adjacent to our lease and moving out, away from our lease.

That data has been analyzed, as I just described. We've also hired a separate third party company to help with the analysis of all that data. They have provided a report that we have now shared with AER and with the communities, and it has conclusions consistent with what I've been sharing.

The other thing I would like to clarify is that the 5.3 million litres you referenced were from a single incident when we had a drainage pond overflow, and the extent of that spill was contained in a very small area adjacent to our lease. It was very cold weather. It froze, and we immediately cleaned it up.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Let's talk about that small area. You said in your opening statement you had a 1.3‑kilometre lease. Past that is boreal forest.

How can you assure people, especially indigenous communities, that everything stayed within your lease limits and that your operations didn't have an impact on the water, land or wildlife?

[Brad Corson]

We actually have done extensive testing. What I was describing in my opening statement was that as we looked at all of the wells that we have drilled—all of the access to fluids—and analyzed them, the furthest we have seen any impact is 1.3 kilometres off our lease.

However, we have looked beyond that. In fact, we've taken samples all the way at the river—both at the banks and in the river—and confirmed that there is no continuation of that plume.

The whole reason we have this monitoring system is so that we can continue to validate that it is not going any farther. Now, with the pumping and interception system that we've expanded, our objective is to effectively move that plume back onto our lease and eliminate it from spreading any further.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

In the time I have left, I want to focus on something you said in response to a question from Mr. van Koeverden. Following the spill, testing at the municipal water treatment plant revealed high levels of arsenic, iron and aluminum as compared with pre-spill levels.

In your answer to Mr. van Koeverden, you seemed to suggest that wasn't the case. He rightly reiterated that it had, in fact, been shown to be true. Don't you think you should take that testing more seriously?

[Brad Corson]

We're taking them very seriously. That's why, just since we were last together, we've added 175 additional wells that allow us to intercept this seepage and mitigate it. We have several hundred more wells planned over the winter season between now and the end of the year. It's all so that we can ensure that we are not impacting the environment any more than we already have and to mitigate that in the future.

I will acknowledge that on lease—not off lease, but on lease—we have some incidence of higher levels of arsenic, for example. Arsenic is naturally occurring in this area, but we've seen elevated levels. Part of our cleanup is to deal with this, but it has not gone off lease.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you, Mr. Corson.

Welcome to the committee, Ms. McPherson. You may go ahead.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for coming back, Mr. Corson, to answer our questions.

Obviously it's very important that you are here. I, like many of my colleagues in this committee, have heard very different stories from what you have come to committee to share with us. I'm going to walk through some of the details.

Obviously, all of us here, myself included, are deeply troubled by what has happened and continues to happen at the Kearl site and by what it means for tailings ponds, for the environment, for freshwater and for the indigenous communities that are living downstream.

We know that the Kearl mine was built in a highly sensitive area. It was built right next to the wetlands feeding the Firebag River and Muskeg River systems. The review for the mine and tailings site recognized that there was higher permeability in the area proposed for the tailings ponds and that seepage from the tailings ponds could impact significant surface waters. The joint review panel stated that “the proposed location...overlies permeable surficial deposits that will likely be the primary pathway for transmission of process-affected tailings water.... The Joint Panel also [noted] that if unmitigated, this seepage will likely impact surface water bodies to the north, specifically the Firebag River and its three tributaries, and that groundwater and surface water quality could degrade.”

In other words, this was put into a place where it was expected to seep into the environment, and as a condition of approval for this site, the AER, the Alberta Energy Regulator, required Imperial Oil to conduct “a detailed hydrogeological” survey covering “a 5 kilometre radius of the plant;” to identify “groundwater flow patterns;” and to identify “depth to water table, patterns of groundwater movement and hydraulic gradients”.

Did Imperial Oil ever do this? Did it ever complete this hydrogeological survey?

[Brad Corson]

I would certainly expect so. The time frame that you noted was before my time with the company, but I'm sure that as part of the regulator process—

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

As CEO, you should probably be double-checking that this has happened.

[Brad Corson]

—we did complete it. I would just note that you are describing the findings—

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

That was just a yes-or-no question. I don't want to be rude, but you do know how much time we have.

If you have, in fact, completed that, I'd ask that you submit that study to the committee. We'd like to be able to look at it.

[Brad Corson]

We'll happily follow up on that.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

If you haven't, then we may have to find out why that is the case.

As predicted, Imperial Oil's water monitoring reports have shown that there is toxic seepage from this tailings pond and that it was excessive, that there were high levels of dangerous toxins that were seeping through the groundwater. We're talking about dangerous substances, as you know, like sulphate, sulphide, lead, arsenic, methylmercury, selenium, nitrate and PAHs.

Mr. Corson, Imperial Oil knew the risk to the environment and you knew that you were not capturing and containing all the seepages. We know this because data from the two off-lease monitoring wells on the north side of the site showed high levels of toxins associated with tailings, high levels of PAHs—PAHs that, as my friend from the Liberal Party has mentioned, are linked to bladder and other cancers. Those are the cancers that members of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation have suffered at an exceptionally high rate.

You say that somebody should get to the bottom of this. You say that it's not your responsibility. I would beg to differ, sir.

As far back as 2019, Imperial Oil knew that the containment system was not working. In May 2022, you discovered what you called “brown sludge” on the surface, and you must have known what this was. It looked exactly like the brown sludge that sits atop the tailings ponds. You must have known, Mr. Corson, that your containment system was, again, not working. However, you didn't inform the indigenous communities. You didn't tell the communities that live downstream, and you did nothing to mitigate that. It wasn't until March 2023, ten months after the discovery of the brown sludge and six weeks after 5.3 million litres spilled and the environmental protection order, that you started constructing additional monitoring and containment wells.

In April, you came to this committee and claimed that you had solved the problem. You told me and other members of this committee that the containment system was a closed-loop system. If I'd asked you in 2020, Mr. Corson, whether your containment system was working, you would have told me yes. Was it?