Canada's oilsands monitoring system is a mess, according to a federal panel, and the government has to up its game if it wants to restore the public's faith in how the oilsands are managed.
Federal Environment Minister John Baird received a report from the Oilsands Advisory Panel Tuesday. Former environment minister Jim Prentice appointed the six-member expert panel in September.
The panel was one of two struck this year to scrutinize how Canada was monitoring oilsands pollution. The reviews were in response to recent studies that suggested oilsands companies were causing far more pollution than previously thought.
The panel found that oilsands monitoring was fragmented and inconsistent, chair Elizabeth Dowdeswell said in a press conference, and lacked the scientific rigour needed for good decision-making. Researchers were making reams of data, but the panel found it could not be used with any confidence. "There is clearly a lack of leadership and co-ordination," she said.
"Do we have a world-class monitoring system in place?" she asked. "In short, no. However, we could have."
An inter-jurisdictional board lead by Environment Canada, one backed by independent scientists and industry money, could draw together oilsands researchers and make them effective. Without such a board, people would continue to be suspicious of industry performance and government oversight of the oilsands.
Baird accepted the panel's recommendation and vowed to create a new, transparent water monitoring system within 90 days. "The federal government has got to up its game in this in this regard, and frankly industry has to do the same."
Research ‘a dog's breakfast'
The panel found a system that had grown up willy-nilly on a project-by-project basis, said Joseph Rasmussen, panel member and the Canada Research Chair in aquatic ecosystems at the University of Lethbridge. "I guess you could say it was a dog's breakfast."
The big problem was poor leadership, he said. Research programs were dominated by industry with a "disturbing" lack of government involvement. Due to cuts, Alberta Environment didn't have the expertise needed to direct this research.
Without leadership, there was no one to pull the data together to get the big picture. There were groups doing excellent research on air pollutants, for example, but they weren't looking at how those pollutants affected ground and surface water. Others produced data that was so poorly organized that it was impossible to use. "There was a lot of money being spent on [this process] and no new knowledge coming out of it."
David Schindler, the freshwater biologist whose research helped prompt the panel's creation, said he didn't blame the government for these problems. "I think our provincial politicians have been getting some really bad advice," he said.
He and Rasmussen called on Environment Canada scientists to take the lead in co-ordinating oilsands research as only they had the expertise to do it.
Don Thompson, president of the Oilsands Developers Group and a St. Albert resident, supported the panel's call for an updated, industry-funded research framework. "There's a solid base to build on," he noted, as researchers have done extensive studies of the Athabasca River.
In a statement, Alberta Environment Minister Rob Renner said he agreed with the panel's findings and pledged to work with the federal government on this issue. He also announced a provincial panel that would report in June on how to create a world-class environmental monitoring system for the oilsands.
Rasmussen said he was cautiously optimistic about the government's willingness to fix the problem. "If this doesn't happen, we'll be right back in the mud hole again."
The panel's report, A Foundation for the Future, can be found at www.ec.gc.ca.
