In “Who Benefits? An Investigation of Foreign Ownership in the Oil Sands”, Environmental Defence, Équiterre, and Stand.earth maintain that 70 percent of oilsands production is owned by foreign companies and shareholders.
Berman emphasized the big five oilsands producers—Suncor, CNRL, Cenovus, Imperial Oil, and Husky Energy—are all majority foreign-owned, controlling 60 percent of bitumen production.
“Premier Kenney has used his bully pulpit to attack Canadians that are concerned about the climate and the toxic mess being left behind by the oil and gas industry of somehow being unpatriotic,” she said. “This research shows clearly that the majority of the revenues from the oilsands are going to foreign investors while Canadians are left paying for the cleanup.
Who Benefits? An Investigation of Foreign Ownership in the Oil Sands
Reclamation of the oil sands, conventional oil and gas wells, and pipelines in Alberta will cost an estimated $260 billion and take as many as 3000 years to complete.
“The government of Alberta should stop wasting time and money on war rooms and propping up oil companies like Suncor and CNRL who claim to be Canadian but are sucking this country dry.”
Any event — such as a COVID-19 outbreak in any of these oil-supplying countries — that disrupts the flow of crude oil to the refinery threatens the energy security of most people in Atlantic Canada.
Crude oil supply
Relying on non-Canadian suppliers has never been an issue for the refinery. Even during the low points of Canadian-Saudi relations in the summer of 2018 and periods of increased tension in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia has been one of its principal suppliers. (Part of this may be attributable to the fact that about 60 per cent of the refinery’s output is shipped to New England and U.S.-Saudi relations could be affected if Saudi Arabia’s supplies to the Saint John refinery were disrupted.)
However, COVID-19 is a concern for those running the refinery. In April, Irving Oil applied to the Canadian Transportation Agency to use tankers from unspecified, non-Canadian suppliers for these two shipments, as per the requirements of the Coasting Trade Act. In each application it was made clear that the company’s overriding concern was the impact COVID-19 could have on about 80 per cent of its crude oil supply shipped from non-Canadian sources.
This is a legitimate concern.
Cargo ships navigate through Panama Canal waters in Gamboa, Panama, in June 2020. (AP Photo/Arnulfo Franco)
A COVID-19 outbreak in an oil-producing country or on board a tanker could disrupt the flow of crude oil to the Saint John refinery and, consequentially, disrupt the flow of its refined products to most of Atlantic Canada and New England.
Irving Oil’s decision to find alternate ways to access Western Canadian crude oil from British Columbia via the Panama Canal or the U.S. Gulf Coast will undoubtedly increase the diversity of its supply. However, Irving’s concerns over COVID-19 and its international suppliers and shippers are equally applicable to Western Canada’s oilfields and any ships used to carry the crude oil.
To be fair, Irving has few other choices: crude-by-rail is a possibility, but there is limited capacity in its rail yard; TransCanada killed the Energy East project and even if it could be revived, it would take years to complete.
LaGrange should disclose the epidemiological models used to anticipate consequences of both the current reopening plan and several alternatives, so they can be accurately compared.
The public has the right to hear how Alberta’s plan incorporates up-to-date data, verified by districts, about realities in schools. These include factors like class and room sizes; data on which mitigation measures such as smaller class size, better ventilation or medical-grade PPE for teachers could help stem viral spread and their costs. Where good data about the consequences of reopening don’t yet exist, there should be transparency, too.
We should also know what experts have been consulted, what concerns, ideas and recommendations they generated and how these were addressed and evaluated.
Transparency about data and expert recommendations are vital to an informed public. Transparency allows discussion and critique, and allows concrete conversation about risks the public is being asked to accept.
What is the prospect that children, family members or teachers will be hospitalized or die? What are best- and worst-case scenarios in terms of resultant casualties and community spread? The public should know what risks or potential costs everyone is being asked to bear.
Premier Jason Kenney has released few details about back-to-school plans, while emphasizing parent choice. In this photo, Jillian Reid, 9, works at home in Cremona, Alta., in March 2020, after schools closed. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
Transparency also allows parents to make informed choices and to develop a sense of confidence in how decisions are made not only now, but going forward.
Israel, for example, failed to reduce class size and saw an outbreak at a high school when schools reopened that infected hundreds. There were instructions for mask-wearing by students in Grade 4 and older, open windows, frequent hand washing and physically distancing students when possible. But with up to 38 children in classrooms, physical distancing was impossible, and under a heat wave, officials permitted windows closed for air conditioning and allowed a mask-wearing exemption. Are similar outcomes or decisions possible in Alberta?
Transparency also matters as it allows people to evaluate whether plans address and fund ethical requirements pertaining to school staff: adequate provisions so reopenings work logistically, adequate protection that ensures reopenings are maximally safe and adequate compensation for staff who are assuming risks.
Unanswered questions
We need answers to questions such as: How much does teachers’ risk increase in classrooms where social distancing cannot be maintained? Given risks, is hazard pay in order for school staff? If it isn’t — hopefully because projected risks are low — then how about a provincial payout for those who may nonetheless suffer serious illness or death in conjunction with a COVID-19 school outbreak?
That seems only fair and could contribute to confidence in what to expect.
In the end, transparency allows us to hold leadership accountable. Politicians and scientists can be wrong. If the public knows what the province’s projections are and accepts them, then it can be prepared for predicted bumps without losing trust in leadership. If the models turn out to be inaccurate or ethically unacceptable, the public deserves a change in course.
If requests for transparency go unanswered, Albertans must assume either that the scientific expertise behind decisions to open schools is inadequate, or that the education minister is failing to base her decisions on scientific expertise. Neither option is acceptable with so many lives at stake.
Alberta is in desperate need of economically viable energy construction projects.
Clean energy sources, such as solar and wind, have absolutely cratered in price over the past decade. Prices for on-shore wind have come down 70 per cent and prices for photovoltaic solar have come down 90 per cent, both compared to 2010. Low wind prices now make it the lowest cost source of new electricity in Alberta, as of 2018, shown by the Canadian Energy Research Institute. Canada has not traditionally been a hot spot for solar projects but low prices have allowed new solar projects to smash through predictions for installs. In 2019, the Alberta Electric System Operator predicted that roughly 500 megawatts (MW) of solar would take until 2040 to be installed. Now, in 2020, there is currently already more than 500MW of unsubsidized solar under construction or operating in Alberta, with 84MW already active. Clean energy has become shockingly cost effective and is arriving at scales decades ahead of predictions.
In looking to kickstart our economy in a post-COVID world, we need to follow the market and think about future risks to see where our investment can have the best bang for our buck. The market is showing us that this is in clean-energy projects. Even better, the domestic and global movement for climate action shows us that these projects are not risky and will not face the severe legal and social headwinds that other energy projects have faced over the past two decades.
A 2019 poll by Abacus Data found that 81 per cent of Canadians, and a whopping 75 per cent of Albertans, support transitioning clean energy. Even during the tough economic times Alberta has faced since 2014, international investment has continued to flow into clean-energy projects in Alberta and the public is overwhelmingly interested in accelerating this trend.
Photo by Science in HD on Unsplash. NREL researcher discuss panel orientation and spacing. Working with teams from UMass Clean Energy Extension and Hyperion on a photovoltaic dual-use research project at the UMass Crop Animal Research and Education Center in South Deerfield, MA. They are researching simultaneously growing crops under PV Arrays while producing electricity from the panels. The project is part of the DOE InSPIRE project seeking to improve the environmental compatibility and mutual benefits of solar development with agriculture and native landscapes.
But if solar and wind are already so economical, what more can the government do to help the projects? We need to put the pedal to the floor and simplify financing for clean energy. Wind and solar projects are still relatively new in the financing world and the contract world is still catching up to the technological progress. In the 2014 report, Alberta’s future energy mix: exploring the potential for renewables, KMPG found that the price uncertainty found in Alberta’s market made financing solar, wind, and gas projects difficult. The AESO previously had a program called the Renewable Electricity Program (REP) which provided price certainty for renewable projects to simplify project financing. The contract prices were records for North America, as low as 3.1 cents per kilowatt-hour. The REP brought in roughly $2 billion in project investment, such as the Whitla project near Medicine Hat and the Riverview Wind project near Pincher Creek. Jason Kenney and the UCP cut this program in 2019.
There is an additional $2 billion worth of clean-energy projects in the pipeline in Alberta and reviving the REP can resume the speedy activation of these projects, bringing construction jobs with them. The REP’s mandate should also be expanded to include all clean-energy projects, such as carbon capture installation on existing gas plants, emerging small nuclear schemes, or geothermal wells.
Unfortunately, the ideological blinders on both the UCP and NDP leave them to miss these investment opportunities that we need so badly in our province. The UCP is allergic to any action that acknowledges the need for climate action, and the NDP is overly picky in limiting their focus only on renewable energy, instead of all forms of clean energy.
The Alberta Party shuns ideology and tries to be radically reasonable. It is extremely reasonable to see that clean-energy projects are a good deal now, and going forward, and that they have overwhelming public support. An Alberta Party government will seek out all clean-energy projects and accelerate their development in order to bring as many private sector construction projects into Alberta as soon as possible. We cannot afford to do any less.
Robert Tremblay is Associate Shadow Minister – Natural Gas and Renewable Energy and president of the Calgary-Currie Constituency Association for the Alberta Party.
Alberta Minister of Health Tyler Shandro speaks during a press conference in Calgary on May 29, 2020. The Alberta government is proposing legislation to accelerate approvals of private clinics in order to get more surgeries done. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh
These changes risk undermining the public health-care system, increasing costs and decreasing quality. Media reports about a proposed private surgical facility suggest that the government may be putting profits over the public good in implementing the reforms.
Corporatization of health delivery
The legislative changes allow corporations to make financial arrangements with the government to provide health services, and to contract with physicians to deliver those services.
This is a departure from the current system in which only physicians (either directly or through their professional corporations) could bill the government for providing health services. Unlike physicians, who must place the interests of their patients above their own personal and financial interests, corporations owe financial obligations to their shareholders that may conflict with the interests of patients.
Privatization of health delivery
With the expansion of private delivery, a larger variety of surgical procedures will be performed in private clinics. (Unsplash/National Cancer Institute)
The new legislation also facilitates the private delivery of publicly funded surgeries. Although some services are already delivered privately (most commonly cataract surgery), many more surgeries and a larger variety of procedures will now be performed in private, for-profit, facilities.
The government’s stated rationale for increased private delivery is to reduce wait times. This claim runs contrary to evidence that indicates that reallocating finite health professional hours to the private system increases wait times in the public system.
Because private facilities generally prefer healthier patients with less complex medical needs, those with more complex needs will be left waiting longer for care in public hospitals. Recruiting additional staff to address these issues would be difficult, given the government’s strained relationship with physicians.
Centralization of government control
Perhaps in a bid to minimize opposition to its controversial reforms, the government is also asserting control over key health institutions. For example, the new legislation shrinks the responsibilities of Alberta Health Services (AHS), the entity responsible for contracting with private providers, and allows the government to impose an accountability framework on AHS.
View of the Alberta Legislature in Edmonton on March 28, 2014. A recent proposal by the Alberta government could increase its control over institutions that regulate health professionals. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson
The government recently circulated a proposal that could increase its control over the key functions of institutions that regulate health professionals. Because one of these institutions, the College of Physicians and Surgeons, is responsible for accrediting and setting standards for private surgical facilities, the proposal could be a way of influencing that process.
This facility is likely to benefit from public subsidies. For example, if procedures performed in private facilities result in serious complications, or if patients require readmission to hospital, public hospitals will likely be responsible for treating these patients.
In addition, acquiring land and constructing the facility will require public investment, whether by way of direct funds, tax credits or by allowing the facility to recoup its costs through service contracts negotiated with the government. Furthermore, the investors are reportedly insisting on contractual terms that will make their contract with the government expensive to cancel and binding on future governments, placing financial risks on taxpayers.
There are also transparency problems with the project. Lobbyists had access to high-level government officials, raising concerns that lobbying efforts rather than public interest will influence who receives private contracts, the terms of those contracts and how these facilities will be regulated.
Recent reforms embracing the corporatization and privatization of health services undermine the public health-care system and risk prioritizing profits over patients and taxpayers. However, challenges to public health care are not limited to Alberta.
In “Who Benefits? An Investigation of Foreign Ownership in the Oil Sands”, Environmental Defence, Équiterre, and Stand.earth maintain that 70 percent of oilsands production is owned by foreign companies and shareholders.
