Green Living performed a reality check on the nation’s environmental record—and the results weren’t pretty
Embarrassment #1: Colossal Climate Fossil
The tar sands is a major contributor, not surprisingly, to the fact that Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions were 29 percent higher in 2007 than they were in 1990—when we are supposed to achieve a reduction of a mere six percent below 1990 levels, according to the Kyoto Accord, by 2012. This puts us at thetop of the G8 nations for greenhouse gas emissions growth and, along with notorious political obstruction at UN climate change talks in Poznan, Poland, in 2008, earned us the dubious title of “Colossal Fossil.”
But we can’t just blame the oil and gas industry: Canadians have always had big greenhouse gas emissions per capita. Big roads, big cars and big houses haven’t kept our energy footprint small, nor has there been much pressure on industry to green up its act.
Now our profligate energy use is attracting attention around the world: “Canada has been one of the main blockages to getting a decent deal at international climate talks in the past, and now seems to be one of the main stumbling blocks now to reasonable reductions targets in Copenhagen [where world governments are meeting in December to hammer out a climate accord]—this is a big problem for the whole world,” says British tar sands and climate campaigner Jess Worth. “People are waking up to this now because they are starting to look to Copenhagen and realizing Canada is one of the ‘bad guys.’ ”
Embarrassment #2: Dirty Oil
It has been labelled the most destructive project on Earth for a number of reasons: Boreal forests the size of Florida are being grazed to get at the oily rocks below; each barrel of oil squeezed out produces up to four barrels of irreparably toxic water, housed in permanent lakes so big they can be
seen from space; these are leaking a conservatively estimated 11 million litres a day(pdf) downstream and may be causing cancers in fish and people in the First Nations community of Fort Chipewyan. Aerial shots leave little doubt as to why people have described what is becoming of northern Alberta as a “moonscape.”
And the effects are being felt around the globe: Mining oil from tar sands releases up to four times as many greenhouse gases as pumping conventional oil from a well, resulting in 40 million tonnes of greenhouse gases released from the sands overall in 2007 (which could rise to 142 million tonnes in 2020)—and that doesn’t even count the carbon released when that oil is later burned. And the technologies that we are developing in Alberta are going to be exported around the world to be used to mine oil shales and other fringe fossil fuel reserves in Australia, Europe, Brazil, China and Russia.
Embarrassment #3: Mining
It is said that modern mining was invented in Canada—and the majority of the world’s mining companies are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) (pdf). Naturally therefore, Canada boasts the largest number of mining companies operating overseas—and in developing countries where they can operate under far less stringent environmental standards.
“As we attempt to tighten environmental regulations domestically, many of these companies will just take their projects to the developing world where there are fewer restrictions,” says Bruce Cox executive director of Greenpeace Canada. “Add to that not just the environmental degradation, but also human rights abuses—our companies recognize that these countries desperately need wealth and they take advantage of that.”
The TSX is an attractive home for mining companies because it “has much more minimal requirements about disclosing environmental and social impacts than other stock exchanges, such as the NYSE,” says Catherine Coumans, research co-ordinator with Mining Watch. “There are a lot of Canadian companies facing allegations of severe environmental impacts and human rights abuses. We get complaints from every corner of the world: Zimbabwe, Tibet, Mongolia—the only place we haven’t received complaints from is Antarctica. Part of the problem is that Canadians tend to live in urban centres, away from mines, and they think of mines as just holes in the ground that we fill up afterwards, and aren’t aware of how huge the toxic footprint can be.”
The Mining Map (pdf), produced by Mining Watch and eight other NGOs, highlights 23 well-documented cases of Canadian mining companies facing local opposition and legal actions—and it is “just the tip of the iceberg,” says Coumans.
Canadian companies have been accused of irresponsible and damaging operations in particular in Latin America, such as in Guatemala, Ecuador and Mexico, leaving poisoned lakes and piles of toxic slag in their wake. One of the more infamous cases is the Boac River spill in the Philippines, where a mine operated by Placer Dome dumped several million tonnes of mine tailings containing heavy metals into the river.
A 1996 survey by the Canadian Centre for the Study of Resource Conflict found that only five percent of Canadian mining companies use the guidelines of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as a development for their corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies, and that voluntary CSR among Canadian extraction companies “remains remarkably low.”
One of the problems is that there are no laws in Canada to govern the operations of our mining companies overseas—but a new bill, Bill C-300, aims to rectify this: If it passes, Canadian mining companies operating overseas will be finally be regulated.
And let’s not forget that Canadian operations at home still have their own problems: Just this month opposition by First Nations groups opposed to the environmental havoc that would be wrought by mines at Kitchenuhmaykoosib and Mount Milligan made headlines.
Embarrassment #4: Nuclear
Canada is the largest exporter of uranium, and Saskatchewan is home to the world’s largest uranium mine. In fact, Canada has been the bedrock of nuclear science since the beginning: it was uranium from Port Radium in the Northwest Territories that was flown south, refined and used to make the bombs that were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
Much is made of nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea today, but Canada sold the CANDU reactor to developing nations, including those controlled by dictators and repressive governments including Romania under Nicolae Ceausescu.
But many of the victims of Canada’s uranium mining are the people living in First Nations reserves in Saskatchewan such as Serpent River First Nation, whose residents say they have been slowly poisoned for decades by radioactive byproducts from the mines, sometimes known as “Canada’s slow bombs.”
Embarrassment #5: Fisheries
Five centuries ago you could scoop the cod out of the sea with a bucket. Now, what was once one of the most productive fisheries on the planet is gone, and stands little chance of ever coming back. “This is the number one embarrassment for us in the past 50 years,” says Steven Hazell, executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada.
“Canadians truly should be ashamed that we allowed this to happen on our watch, that we allowed our politicians to fidget and ignore the science,” concurs Cox of Greenpeace Canada. “We like to blame Portugal and Spain, but the fact was that this amazing resource was ours and we squandered it.”
Sad news for Newfoundlanders, and the 30,000 fishermen who were put out of work when the moratorium was declared in 1993. Nor is it just humans who are missing out: whales, sharks, and other ocean predators are missing out, and the effects are felt up and down the food web.
And it seems that we haven’t learned our lesson. Sockeye salmon are now vanishing on our west coast on a scale few expected to see: Only 1.6 million salmon returned to the Fraser River this year, just 10 percent of what was expected. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans continues to shy from imposing fishing restrictions.
“The slow motion destruction of fisheries of salmon on the west coast is happening right before our eyes, even though we already watched the cod disappear,” says Hazell.
And our overfishing habits continue in the deep ocean, with global consequences: Canada is one of few nations opposed to a UN moratorium on bottom trawling, an incredibly destructive fishing practice where industrial fishing boats drag huge nets along the ocean floor with concrete weights to scoop up bottom-dwelling fish (and which destroys ocean floor habitats like deep sea corals).
Embarrassment #6: Human Rights
“Where else would our government allow open toxic ponds to exist? Only near a First Nations reserve,” says Cox, referring to the tar sands operations.
“Most NGOs view the tar sands as an issue to highlight the need for a new energy economy, but we look at the sands primarily as a human rights issue,” says Clayton Thomas-Muller of theMathias Colomb Cree Nation (Pukatawagan) in Northern Manitoba and tar sands campaign organizer for The Indigenous Environmental Network, who recently visited London, England, to lead grassroots protests and to highlight the issues facing First Nations communities downstream of the Athabasca tar sands. “It wouldn’t happen like this if there was proper enforcement of aboriginal laws and our constitutional treaty rights.”
Toxic pollution affecting downstream people in Fort Chipewyan and Serpent River are just two examples of a long history of more relaxed environmental restrictions on industrial operations near First Nations communities. TakeAamjiwnaang, near Sarnia, Ontario: The reserve is internationally known for having one of the lowest birth rates of boys the world over, which scientists suspect is related to the petrochemical factories that surround their land.
In fact, the proximity of industrially intensive operations near First Nations communities and the lax regulations controlling their emissions is so commonplace that it is often known by another name: environmental racism.
Embarrassment #7: Smugness
“This whole idea of Canadian smugness is so tiresome—I would include it on any list of our environmental black marks,” says Hazell. “It is one of the main things that is holding us back from actually doing anything constructive, especially because it allows the current government to get away with doing absolutely nothing on climate change.”
“A big part of the problem,” adds Cox, “is that we’ve been gifted with incredible natural resources that we have perceived as so vast—but we’ve really dropped the ball on those gifts.”