Who ­monitors the oil sands monitors? – by Peter Foster (National Post – October 18, 2013)

The National Post is Canada’s second largest national paper.

Oil sands firms have been ‘woefully’ bad at defending industry

With defenders such as Ottawa, Edmonton and the oil industry, oil sands development at times hardly seems to need enemies. “Woeful” doesn’t begin to describe their performance in addressing environmental criticism, which is at the root of one of the most contentious issues in Canada/U.S. relations: presidential approval of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Government and industry long ago gave up on climate science, even if they still argue that the oil sands are statistically irrelevant, but they have been equally bad at countering criticisms of local environmental impacts.

Federal/provincial infighting over monitoring is preventing an effective response to opponents whose media savvy stands in inverse proportion to their objectivity. Industry — itself beset by communications and joint-action difficulties — is concerned that it is being asked to fund a biased monitoring system, but is scared openly to criticize its political masters, or activist “monitors.”

At last weekend’s anti-Keystone XL demonstrations in Washington, Sierra Club activist Crystal Lameman, whose native band lives close to the oil sands, claimed that development had “completely desecrated” an area of Alberta “the size of a country.”

She also claimed that her people were “dying of cancer,” that local fish had tumours, and that babies had to be airlifted to hospital because of drinking contaminated water. “And that’s the truth,” she said. According to the best science, though, it’s not the truth, and yet Ms. Lameman’s remarks reflect the musings of one of Canada’s leading scientists, University of Alberta biologist David Schindler, who has suggested that the oil sands represent a “sacrifice zone” the size of Greece.

Prof. Schindler’s 2009 and 2010 studies of pollution collecting on snow and then melting into local water systems were widely reported as alarming when they were not, at least at current levels. More important, Prof. Schindler talked up his report with a press conference in Fort Chipewyan, whose inhabitants claimed abnormal cancer levels, and was photographed with a tumorous fish that, it turned out, had nothing to do with oil sands pollution.

A more recent study of regional lake sediments by John Smol, Canada Research chair on Environmental Change, was presented by Prof. Smol, an ideological soulmate of Prof. Schindler, as a “smoking gun,” when it presented nothing of the sort.

Certainly, Profs. Schindler and Smol raise questions about long-term cumulative impacts, but they have demonstrated nothing immediately alarming. What is alarming is the way their reports were presented, and the headless chicken response of governments.

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