From the start, the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in mass
mobilization and collective effort that the climate movement can only
dream of. The sheer number of stories in the news, to say nothing of the
daily public health announcements and appeals for social distancing and
masking, demonstrate a level of engagement and concern never seen in
the climate movement.
Is it possible for a similar campaign to get off the ground with
regard to the climate emergency — a far graver threat to the long-term
health of our world and those who live in it than the pandemic? The
answer is yes, but it requires changing how we communicate this
crisis.
Critics say UCP piling expenses onto Alberta families
The Opposition NDP criticized the new fee as another example of the UCP government making life more expensive for Alberta families.
“Working families are already being pushed to the brink by the pandemic and the long list of new costs Jason Kenney has imposed on them,” said Calgary-Buffalo MLA Joe Ceci in a release.
“More income tax, more property tax, more school fees, more tuition, more insurance costs, more utility costs and now a $90 fee for Albertans to enjoy a park that belongs to them. It’s an insult to the legacy of Peter Lougheed. The UCP should have learned their lesson from trying to sell off provincial parks and mine our mountains.”
The Alberta Wilderness Association also criticized the new fee.
“It’s almost like dealing with a government that has an allergy to renewable energy, but it’s more than that,” Winfield told The Energy Mix.
“This is a program of extermination, for lack of a better way of
describing it. They’re going through the last vestiges of the [former]
Green Energy Act that facilitate renewables in the province and
systematically eliminating them. Other than in ideological terms, it
doesn’t make any sense.”
“Doug Ford’s government continues to demonstrate evidence-free
decision-making,” agreed Greenpeace Canada Senior Energy Strategist
Keith Stewart. “Renewable energy was always the cleanest form of power,
but in the last few years it has become the cheapest form of new
generation. We should be welcoming it into the mix, not strangling it
with red tape.”
Aamjiwnaang First Nation is surrounded by ‘Chemical Valley,’ a large complex of petrochemical plants, located near Sarnia, Ont. (Jon Lin Photography/flickr) CC BY-NC
Bill C-230, a private member’s bill that aims to address environmental racism, has passed second reading in a 182-153 vote, and is now under discussion with the environment parliamentary committee before it returns to the House of Commons. If the bill is passed, Canada would become one of the first countries in the world to require the government to develop a national strategy to tackle environmental racism.
As law professors with expertise in matters relating to both the environment and social justice, we argue that this move is necessary both for reasons of justice and also to fulfil Canada’s human rights obligations.
What’s in the proposed bill
Nova Scotia MP Lenore Zann introduced Bill C-230 to compel the minister of the environment to create a national strategy to redress environmental racism within two years.
This strategy would include making efforts to identify, document and monitor environmental racism, creating processes to increase the participation of Indigenous, racialized and other affected communities in environmental policy-making, providing redress for harm due to environmental injustice and ensuring access to clean air and water.
The case for a law like this is stronger than ever. Other jurisdictions are currently seeking to address environmental racism, and the federal government is taking action to tackle climate change and other environmental issues. But most importantly, unjust environmental burdens continue to be placed on racialized communities in Canada.
Trailer for ‘There’s Something in the Water,’ a film about environmental racism in Nova Scotia, based on the book by Ingrid Waldron.
When Baskut Tuncak, the U.N. special rapporteur on toxic chemicals, visited Canada in 2019, he found that Indigenous people are disproportionately affected by toxic exposures. In a statement, he wrote that he had “observed a pervasive trend of inaction by the Canadian government” in addressing the health threats of toxic exposures and their cumulative effects.
Canada, unlike the U.S., lacks data on environmental racism. Bill C-230 would require the federal government to:
“Collect information and statistics relating to the location of environmental hazards … examine the link between race, socioeconomic status and environmental risk … [and] collect information and statistics relating to negative health outcomes in communities that have been affected by environmental racism.”
Historic Africville is a notable case. Africville, a Black community in Halifax, became the site of a railway, a slaughterhouse and an open-pit dump. The city then relocated residents, under the auspices of neighbourhood improvement, and acquired the valuable shoreline. Black communities in Nova Scotia continue to resist proposals to locate environmentally hazardous facilities near their communities.
A man fishes next to a refinery south of Sarnia, Ont., in 2007. CP PHOTO/Dave Chidley
As climate change and its impacts become more significant, it’s important to pay attention to who it affects most. In its recent decision on climate pricing, the Supreme Court of Canada declared that climate change is “an existential challenge” that has the potential to cause “irreversible harm [that] would be felt across the country and would be borne disproportionately by vulnerable communities and regions.”
Recent efforts at reconciliation with First Nations, Inuit and Métis people and the Black Lives Matter movement have demonstrated the continuing salience of — and urgent need for — anti-racist and decolonial strategies. The fight against systemic environmental racism is a key element of this.
Climate bills with a strong focus on environmental justice are also moving through legislatures in New York and Massachusetts. Canada could follow suit by linking its proposed Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act (Bill C-12) with environmental justice and Bill C-230.
The net-zero bill is stronger than Bill C-230 because it would legally bind the feds to achieving the net-zero target by 2050. It also requires five-year targets with mandatory plans and progress reports, and an independent review of the results by the commissioner of the environment and sustainable development, so that changes in government will not derail the goal. Adding an explicit commitment to environmental justice and plans to achieve it would enhance Canada’s net-zero bill.
In addition, proposed changes to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act include adding a right to a healthy environment, a commitment to uphold the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the obligation to consider vulnerable populations and the cumulative effects of harmful substances.
A new precedent
The Biden administration’s plan sets a much more ambitious goal than Bill C-230. However, Bill C-230 is the perfect opportunity for Canada to set a national precedent with this demonstrable commitment to environmental justice and addressing the legacy of environmental racism.
Laws and rights, on their own, can be toothless if they do not come with binding duties, explicit standards and adequate enforcement. The government, civil society and citizens will need to be active and vigilant to redress and prevent environmental racism. The law will also need to be backed up with adequate resources and transparency to ensure that the national strategy is participatory, adequately resourced and leads to continual renewal and improvement.
Although Bill C-230 would merely be a first step in a larger process, it is an important one in the right direction that can act as a catalyst for more transformative change, particularly if it is linked with other current policy ambitions, such as the net-zero carbon emissions bill and the proposed amendments to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act.
The Speech from the Throne opens every new session of Parliament. The Speech introduced the government’s direction and goals, and outlines how it will work to achieve them. One of them was standing up for Canadian values, including progress on reconciliation, gender equality, and systemic racism.
The Council of Canadians understand the direct link between austerity, racist violence and the erosion of democratic processes. The U.S. is bearing the fruit of decades of cruelty — breaking up unions, cutting public services and siphoning public resources and wealth into the hands of the very elite. These policies, also present in Canada, inevitably deepen racial divisions because our systems already marginalize Black, Indigenous and people of colour. Combined with explicit scapegoating, this creates fertile ground to justify political power for white leaders while targeting state and communal violence toward racialized peoples. We respond to threats against democracy.
It’s a daily reality for many Black, Indigenous and People of Colour in Canada. In the wake of public outrage about the systemic racism and disproportionate police violence experienced by Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC), a new report presented to the United Nations Human Rights Council documents troubling findings of environmental racism and injustice in Canada.
So far, the Trudeau government has declined to recognize this right, despite more than 100 MPs from all parties pledging their support and Liberal Party of Canada members voting for it to be a policy priority. While the federal government has committed to “modernizing” CEPA, there is no guarantee that this right will be recognized.
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A western Canada think tank is calling on Alberta to lower regulatory barriers that it says discourage businesses from reusing abandoned and unreclaimed oil and gas well sites. Observers say the scheme could allow fossils to hand off many billions of dollars in environmental liabilities.
Making it easier to convert an old well site into anything from a geothermal plant to a municipal park would speed site restoration and help ease the burden of unfunded cleanup costs in the energy sector, said Energy Futures Lab animator Juli Rohl, co-author of the report by the Canada West Foundation.
“We think these wells should be cleaned up, where possible,” Rohl told The Canadian Press. “But where that either isn’t going to happen or where there is a viable new life for them, that should be considered.”
Critics suggest the approach would allow industry to avoid cleaning up the mess it creates.
“It’s a transparent attempt to pass this liability to someone else,” said Regan Boychuk of the Alberta Liabilities Disclosure Project, a group that monitors industrial effects on landowners.
Alberta has more than 7,700 orphan wells—abandoned and unreclaimed by formers owners, often during bankruptcy. Another 95,000 wells are inactive. (Another count in 2018 put the total at 155,000.)
The cleanup liability for those wells has been estimated as high as C$260 billion.
Rohl’s paper suggests at least some of those sites could be reused, more or less as is. Some could generate geothermal power. Others could provide now-valuable minerals such as lithium. Others could house small solar farms.
A few companies in Alberta have repurposed old fossil energy sites for geothermal and solar projects. Allowing more such activity could create jobs and diversify the economy, improve the energy sector’s outlook and keep new industry off undeveloped land.
But Alberta law requires a fossil energy company to fully clean up a site before it can be transferred. Concrete pads or roads must be removed, even if a new user wants to keep them.
The Calgary-based foundation, a think tank on western issues, suggests a company should be allowed to defer its cleanup responsibilities and transfer them to a new operator. “This would allow transfer of the remaining surface infrastructure and reclamation liability to the repurposer,” the report says.
Rohl acknowledges only about 10% of orphan wells are suitable for geothermal or solar development. Greenhouses or even municipal parks could be considered. “We decided to leave it open for any uses.”
Boychuk said repurposing would allow an industry that has taken billions of dollars out of the ground to walk away from its environmental responsibilities.
He said the effect would be to move environmental liabilities off the books of oil companies and move them to new ones. How many greenhouses, he asks, can afford to pay the $100,000 the C.D. Howe Institute says is the average cost to reclaim a well?
“Hurray! We got solar panels,” he said. “But the contamination sits there.
“The only real issue in the industry is escaping a very, very large liability and this is the latest attempt.”
Nigel Bankes, dean of resource law at the University of Calgary, said it’s a good idea to favour the reuse of old industrial sites instead of creating new ones. But, he added, much more work needs to be done to ensure the public believes cleanup costs aren’t just being kicked down the road.
“It’s going to take a lot of work to put together a liability regime that makes sense (for) existing licensees, the people who will inherit that liability, and to convince the public that the deal offers better assurance,” and “that remediation issues will be adequately dealt with.”
Start small, advised Bankes, who suggested transfers of unremediated sites should be initially restricted to between energy companies.
“Maybe it makes sense to start with a narrower focus.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 26, 2021.
Critics say UCP piling expenses onto Alberta families
