British Columbia wants to build a natural gas industry that will rival the tar sands. In the northeast corner of the province, fracking projects litter the landscape and poison First Nations communities. On the North Coast, the Wilderness Committee is fighting proposals to industrialize vital salmon habitat. We’ve sparked a groundswell of opposition to projects on the Salish Sea that put communities all along Howe Sound and the Fraser River at grave risk. With the methane leaks in drilling for it, the power needed to liquefy it and the carbon emissions from burning it, natural gas is a disaster for the climate. BC needs to ban fracking and reject LNG exports now.

A controversial and destructive way of extracting natural gas, known as hydraulic fracturing or ‘fracking’, threatens fresh water and wilderness areas. Fracking is now a standard extraction process used by gas companies to exploit gas deposits trapped below the ground. The remaining gas reserves in Canada are trapped in hard shale rock formations, and are difficult to access.

The process of fracking injects vast amounts of freshwater combined with hazardous chemicals like benzene along with sand into drill sites to break up hard shale formations and release the trapped gas. Fracking also causes large amounts of methane to escape into the atmosphere, which has a serious impact on our climate.

Source: Fracking & LNG | Wilderness Committee

B.C. government quietly posts response to expert fracking report

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Posted on the discussion forum it says: Notably absent from the government’s news release — posted on its website Thursday but strangely not sent out to media — is any commitment to investigate the human health impacts of fracking in the province’s northeast.

The issue was flagged by Dawson Creek doctors as a potential cause for concern after they saw patients with symptoms they could not explain, including nosebleeds, respiratory illnesses and rare cancers, as well as a surprising number of glioblastomas, a malignant brain cancer.

The independent scientific review did not include an examination of the public health implications of fracking, in keeping with the government’s quiet assurance to the industry lobby group Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers that the hot button issue would not be included in the panel’s mandate.

With all the talk about global warming and the Paris Agreement, it’s hard to believe that F7 countries are still pouring billions into fossil fuel development. Not only will it affect our health, but it’s destroying the planet. I thought, the last couple of elections, a lot of us were trying to vote in politicians who shared environmental concerns with Canadians. It seems we were duped.