Thank you.
Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Melody Lepine, and I'm a member of the Mikisew Cree First Nation. I'm joining you all from Treaty 8 territory in northeastern Alberta, my ancestral homelands of the Cree and Dene, and of my Métis relatives.
I'll just introduce the Mikisew Cree First Nation. We're one of five first nations in this region that are basically heavily impacted by oil sands development. My key position with the Mikisew Cree is as director for government and industry relations, so I oversee the interaction with not only oil sands developers but also policy and regulators such as the federal government. This is an important policy being developed to address a significant impact of climate change.
I'll talk a little about our territory. We come from the Wood Buffalo National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the world's largest freshwater deltas. Significant impacts of climate change have been felt and seen over decades. This is not new to the federal government and provincial government, I think, as we participated in numerous joint federal and provincial hearings, raising not only the impacts of climate change but also the direct impacts from oil sands development. These include cumulative effects such as impacts on our way of life, our rights and our culture; the loss and decline of important key species such as boreal caribou and medicinal plants; and, most importantly, the our ability to access our traditional lands as we witness the drying of one of the world's largest freshwater deltas, the Peace-Athabasca Delta.
Our submission was shared with the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and really highlights some of our concerns about carbon capture, mainly because we feel that more can be done in addressing climate change in developing policy and legislation—not only looking at reducing emissions, but also at other ways of addressing climate change, perhaps by introducing things like an emissions cap.
Additionally, I would add that if the federal government is only going to look at carbon capture, as one example, how does something like that address loss of biodiversity? How does it address the tailings issue, the potential release of tailings?
For us, when we look at things, we look at it from a much broader and cumulative nature. Is there an opportunity to address things like the impacts on our treaty rights, cumulative effects, tailings treatment, loss of biodiversity, potential listing of a world heritage site and an endangered listing? There are many other factors to consider when looking at this.
The Mikisew Cree have called for reductions, and for issues to be addressed to deal with climate change. Many of you know that we are dealing with significant impacts from oil sands development, but climate change is really exacerbating things. We are a small, remote community. Tomorrow, our ice road closes, and it's not only a food security issue and a matter of getting goods to our fly-in remote community. The duration of the season for us to commute and travel to our community is also diminishing. I will also add that it's not only a safety issue. We've had a 2016 wildfire here. We've had floods in this area. We're also seeing unforeseen impacts such as those events happening more frequently.
I guess my overall ask is that there be an opportunity here to protect our treaty rights. There's an opportunity here to protect our way of life and to deal with cumulative impacts, deal with the loss in biodiversity such as the woodland caribou, which are really deteriorating before our eyes. We've had a 50% reduction in the population of caribou, likely due to the impacts of the oil sands development, but also impacts from climate change.
Is there a way to address all of these things? Yes, it's by dealing with climate change and effective policy to reduce emissions and putting an emissions cap in place as one of the ways. With that I'll just conclude.
Thank you again for the opportunity to present.