Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to join the debate today on the motion put forward by my colleague from Edmonton—Strathcona. I will repeat it for the benefit of the House and the people watching who have perhaps just tuned in. The motion states:
That this House notes the horror with which Canadians observe the ecological disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico and their call for action to prevent such an event in Canada, and therefore calls on the government immediately to conduct a thorough review and revision of all relevant federal laws, regulations and policies regarding the development of unconventional sources of oil and gas, including oil sands, deepwater oil and gas recovery, and shale gas, through a transparent process and the broadest possible consultation with all interested stakeholders to ensure Canada has the strongest environmental and safety rules in the world, and to report to the House for appropriate action.
When we consider the wording of the motion itself calling for a thorough review and for revision of the laws to make them the strongest environmental and safety rules in the world, you would think that this would be an absolute no-brainer. In light of what we have seen in the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, it seems pretty clear that a review is called for.
A spokesperson for the Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board, a federal-provincial body that looks after the offshore oil and gas regime in Newfoundland and Labrador, said within a matter of days after the events in the Gulf of Mexico that it would have to review its regulations in light of that incident. It is pretty clear that the people of Canada want to see a review.
I will quote a Newfoundland environmentalist of long standing, a gentleman by the name of Stan Tobin. He has been active in environmental matters over the last 20 or 30 years, particularly in Placentia Bay, where there is a lot of tanker traffic, an oil refinery, a transshipment port, and a lot of concern about the environmental consequences of oil and gas. Mr. Tobin said that it is time that the federal government did a complete review.
He is talking about the tanker traffic here. He said:
It's been 20 years since the last one was done. A lot has changed. If government and the oil industry believe that we are in a position to adequately respond to something like what happened down in the [Gulf of Mexico], they are the only ones who believe it. No way are we prepared.
That is a sentiment expressed by a lot of people across the country, both lay people and people who know what they are talking about, having studied the issue for many years, and even by those who have a lot of respect for the technological expertise of people in the oil and gas industry.
There was, in fact, an admission by Chevron, which is doing the Orphan Basin project, the deepwater well that was started just a couple of weeks ago, when it put forth its proposal for drilling five years ago. It candidly acknowledged that it would not be able to clean up an oil spill of any significance if one were to occur. It did not have the capability to do it because of the weather and wave conditions in that particular area, because of the fact that the oil would disperse very quickly, and because the containment measures were likely to be inadequate. However, it said that the chance of it happening was so rare that it did not think the risk was too great.
It candidly admitted that on the technological side, it did not have the capability of doing an oil-spill cleanup. I think that is sobering news for a lot of people to come to realize.
After hearing the government talk and after listening carefully to the Minister of Natural Resources today, one would think that it would not be difficult for the government to actually support this motion and engage in this review. The Minister of Natural Resources said this morning that he and his department are constantly reviewing their rules and regulations and that they want to be assured that they are the best in the world. How is that different from the motion before the House today? It is not enough to have assurances from the government. There has to be an open and transparent process.
If the minister truly believes that we are in the forefront of the world in terms of environmental protection and environmental safety and operations in this kind of oil and gas activity, then what does he have to fear from a transparent process that would allow stakeholders or others, other than the government officials, to examine the issues and pronounce on them?
This is intended to provide a level of confidence Canadians would require for the type of oil and gas development contemplated here, those that are of higher risk to the environment.
We know that the oil sands have an extremely severe negative environmental footprint as they operate today. We know that there are dangers, as we have seen in the Gulf of Mexico, from deepwater drilling. There are dangers from offshore drilling in general.
I think the sensitivity to that is so great in British Columbia, for example, that a moratorium has been in place for some 30 years. It is likely to and should continue, because that is what the people of British Columbia want. They do not want to take the risk of a potential oil spill occurring.
We have had pretty good success on the east coast, I have to say. The oil and gas developments in the Hibernia, White Rose, and Terra Nova projects have had some oil spills. An estimate was given the other day by the CNLOPB chair to the parliamentary committee for natural resources. I think the number was approximately one barrel of oil spilled for every million barrels produced over the years. I suppose that is a good ratio. Maybe it is and maybe it is not. Someone else might have a different opinion on that.
We have seen some spills. On the other hand, we have seen what I would call inadequate environmental monitoring. We have a self-reporting system in the east coast oil and gas industry. The industry is the one that monitors the environmental effects and reports on them to the CNLOPB, which then makes them public.
There has been constant criticism in my province from the environmental scientists, researchers, and academics who work in this area. They say that self-reporting is not the best form of reporting at all. One speaker at a recent event said that if someone asks me how I am doing or how good I am, I will probably give a pretty favourable report about myself. If somebody else is asked how I am doing, it might be a little bit more objective.
This is something that has been recommended in the past. In fact, the environmental assessment for the Terra Nova project recommended strongly that there be independent environmental monitoring of the project. This did not turn out to be one of the conditions of the development of the Terra Nova production platform.
Since then, we have seen some incidents with significant spills, particularly of processed water, that went undetected and carried on for a long period of time. This is something that we find abhorrent. It obviously shows that the rules we have in Canada are not the best they can be and certainly are not the best in the world. We have also seen incidents like this that require attention.
I want to talk about the deepwater drilling being done by Chevron. It needs to be put into perspective a little bit. It is not the first well done. It is the deepest. Chevron did drill a deepwater well in the Orphan Basin in 2007. It is not intended to be a production well. In fact, they are not even going to do a test flow. They are just drilling the well for the sake of obtaining core samples. They will cement it in at the end of the process. This is purely an exploration well, so there is some difference there in terms of what the ultimate risk might be.
It has taken three months to drill the well. The CNLOPB has moved on this very quickly and has said that they want additional oversight requirements there. Interestingly enough, at a certain point, when they actually get into the high-carbon zone, which is considered the pressure zone, they will be taking what the CNLOPB calls a pause. We hope at that time that there will be an opportunity for an assessment of the dangers of continuing based on what happened in the Gulf.