Canada’s multibillion dollar tar sands industry in Alberta is a climate wrecking force with immense sway over Canadian politics. ‘Killer Water,’ a new documentary produced in partnership with The Real News, Ricochet Media, and IndigiNews, exposes the long-hidden truths of Big Oil’s operations on the health and environment of local First Nations communities.
Hosted by award-winning journalist Brandi Morin, this live panel features Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, toxicologist Mandy Olsgard, physician Dr. John O’Connor, and lawyer Steven Donziger. This panel took place on Monday, Nov. 27, and was produced by Ricochet Media. It is shared here with permission.
Transcript
Brandi Morin: Tânisi, hello everybody. Thank you so much for being a part of this discussion today. I am Brandi Morin. I am a freelance journalist based in Treaty 6 area. I am Cree, Iroquois, and French. I specialize in telling Indigenous stories, and I have recently produced a documentary called Killer Water, and it’s about the impacts of the Alberta oil sands and tailings spills on Indigenous communities. This documentary specifically focuses on Fort Chipewyan, which is downstream from one of the world’s largest industrial projects. The film was released last Friday, and we are gathering today with some of the experts that were in the film, as well as an incredible lawyer named Steven Donziger. He’s from south of the Medicine Line in the United States, who’s worked extensively with Native communities who are fighting for their rights with oil companies in the Amazon.
So thank you to everybody for being here. We have Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation chief, Allan Adam. He is featured in the documentary. He’s been in leadership for nearly two decades now. And we have Dr. John O’Connor. He is a medical physician. He worked in Fort Chipewyan for several years, and still works in Fort McMurray, Alberta, and area. And he helped raise the alarm, so to speak, of the disease and cancer rates that were significantly high in the Fort Chipewyan area.
And then we have Mandy Olsgard. Mandy is a toxicologist, she’s an environmental scientist, and she is the most prominent scientist of her kind in the province, and, arguably, the country. And she has worked for industry and the Alberta Energy Regulator, as well as many Indigenous communities. So hay hay, thank you.
Hi, Steven. Good to see you. Thank you so much for being here. This is such a badass group of panelists.
So I would really love to start today with Chief Allan Adam. Thank you so much, Chief, for being here, for making the time. And I want to express my condolences to you and your family on the loss of your father-in-law, Johnny Courtoreille, who I had the privilege of meeting when I was up there. And he was healthy and joking, and a lovely man who had just come from being in the bush, which was his love, which is what Chief Adam shared with us. And he passed away in October of cancer. So condolences to you and your family.
First off, Chief, I haven’t spoken to you in a few months. I haven’t really spoken to you directly since I was there. And I know that you had a chance to view the film last week. I am wondering, first off, what was your response to the film when you seen it?
Chief Allan Adam: It brought out the anger, the resentment, in regards to what’s been going on for decades. It’s probably been going on for about four decades now. Looking back at when we started this crusade and getting to where we’re at today, you ask yourself, is there ever an endpoint? It just gets worse and worse as we carry on. And it just goes to show that the people in the community do have concerns in regards to what’s going on upstream from us. And we, as leaders, we’re worried about it, and we’ve questioned parties involved and everything, and we continue to question the authorities at hand in regards to what’s happening here.
And till today, ACFN hasn’t got any answers in regards to what’s going on out there, other than the fact that hidden facts are being brushed underneath the rug and nothing’s being brought out to the public. And one thing for sure, that Alberta Energy Regulators, their job is to inform the public when some kind of environmental protection order is being called out. And none of this is being done, especially when it comes to harmful water mixed with heavy materials and stuff like that that are unknown to the human body. And then you could tell from the community’s point of view, rapid rates of cancer are still being recorded, and nothing’s being done about it at this point in time.
It seems like when it comes to the environment, there is no human health concern and nobody wants to take the responsibility for your human health, and especially when it’s coming out of Fort Chip. And then when you look at the blueprint, and you start following downstream from there, and you could tell the rates of cancer are even going up downstream further than Fort Chip as well too. And all these have to be recorded and have to be taken down into consideration because these things are happening all over the place, and they’re happening to mostly Aboriginal communities downstream.
Brandi Morin: Absolutely. I’ve seen even the stories that I’ve covered throughout my years as a journalist that it’s the Native communities that are always impacted and overlooked by industry, and how these governments, they excuse these projects in the name of so-called national or public interest. And so there were always communities that made these literal sacrifice zones, and it’s always the Native communities. And it’s like, at what point do they even draw the line? And so that was my hope in making this doc and doing other stories, to try to humanize people, so people can really see this is what people live with on the ground.
And specifically, Chief, I know that you have been advocating for years, but this year particularly, I would say the past few years with COVID and such, but this year for you, with the spills and then the wildfire which saw Fort Chipewyan entirely evacuated, and the loss of loved ones, and the election. Can you explain to people that might not understand here how all of this correlates together with the wildfires, with the industry, and these issues that we’re talking about? How do they correlate and what was that like for you?
Chief Allan Adam: It was overwhelming, I guess, in that regard. When you take a look at the early spring when we had to deal with the report of the spill that was happening into the tributaries that led into the Firebag River and also into the Athabasca from Imperial’s Kearl site. And the AER had covered that up. And dealing with that situation, and from bringing it out into perspective and everything, and then having the wildfire occur in the community just two kilometers from the community at the airport, we had to change gears. And for the first time ever, the community has been evacuated from Fort Chip. And it was very tough on the leaders. You just don’t want to go through that again.
And I know that in my earlier terms, around 2008, 2009, I had mentioned in a documentary once that we would become environmental refugees due to climate change. And when I raised the issue back then about climate change, everybody was saying, Chief Adam, you’re crazy to talk about climate change because there’s no such thing as climate change. And I gave bold warning that climate change was coming, and it is happening, because it’s happening in our own backyard. And we, as traditional land users, we see it happening on a day-to-day basis from what’s taken place in our area, and the transformation of scenery and water, and everything, and stuff like that.
And the drying up of… The moisture content is not there anymore in the summer. In spring runoffs, you don’t feel that moisture inside there, and everything is evaporating, and it’s just getting drier. And a little spark will ignite anything. And that was pretty noticeable the past summer. Climate change is here, it’s real, it’s alive, and it ain’t going nowhere. And we live in the world’s largest complex of an industrial movement right now. And there’s nobody at the helm, I could say, because the Alberta Energy Regulator has failed to protect the communities that are downstream, and failed to warn the communities of potential contaminants coming down the river when they are the ones that issued, what you call it, environmental protection orders.
Brandi Morin: Hay hay Chief, thank you. I’m going to come back to you. I have more questions for you.
Dr. O’Connor, so you brought up concerns, a couple of decades ago already, about different high rates of cancer, rare cancers and disease that you were seeing, and then you were reprimanded by the Physician’s Association, investigated for raising undue alarm. And then you were, what would we call it, you were resolved of that.
Dr. John O’Connor: Vindicated.
Brandi Morin: Vindicated. Yes. But you were seeing this a long time ago. You talk about it in the film. Now we’re in 2024 almost, and we’re talking about this. We’re talking about these tailings spills. You said, when I interviewed you for the film, you said, you know what? I wasn’t surprised at all. This is ongoing. You said these spills have been ongoing. This was just another incident, even though it was alarming for the public to find out and understand. But since then, you have done a lot of research into what’s been happening and connecting it to medical issues. Can you speak to that a little bit?
Dr. John O’Connor: Yeah. Brandi, I started going up to Fort Chip almost a quarter of a century ago, almost 25 years ago.
Brandi Morin: Wow.
Dr. John O’Connor: And when I went into the community, the first few visits, I was vetted by the elders, which is a process that I understand clearly now. But I listened to their descriptions, their traditional knowledge, descriptions of the changes in the environment that they’d seen in the 10, 15 years prior to me coming up, which was astonishing. The story was so consistent across the board.
And then I started to find the amount of pathology that I did, the cancers and the autoimmune disease that exists in the community. A population of 1,200 people, the majority of which were traditional living off the land and the water. And I questioned, where could this be coming from? And at the time… And still, Health Canada is responsible for on-reserve health. So this had been an issue for a number of years before I came to the community. I just documented and brought it to light, and I questioned the origin of it.
And so historically, going back to the mid to late 90s, there have been recommendations by scientific groups, federal and provincial, and university based. Based on their analysis of the downstream environment and what was happening upstream, there have been strong recommendations and suggestions for baseline health studies to be done of the human population. Completely ignored. Twice in the 90s, then in 2009, when the Alberta Cancer Board confirmed rare cancers and higher rates of cancer in Fort Chip, they recommended it as well. 2014, University of Manitoba did a study of the community, and they strongly recommended a health study. Nothing has been done.
But in the meantime, going back to your initial question, these latest spills highlight what’s been going on, like Allan said, for decades. These tailings ponds that line the river are designed to seep and leak into the groundwater and the surface water. If they didn’t — And this is Alberta government and industry’s evidence — The dikes that keep these tailings ponds intact would collapse. So this noxious water in these tailings ponds, which contain Class 1 human carcinogens as well as fish and wildlife carcinogens, have been seeping and going downstream for well over 40 years. So the delta spill is just the tip of the iceberg.
Brandi Morin: Yeah. And so as far as you know, what have been the reasons why any of these recommended health studies by scientists and health professionals, why have they not been done?
Dr. John O’Connor: I believe because industry is being protected. Governments, provincial and federal, do not want to know the truth.
Brandi Morin: Wow.
Dr. John O’Connor: It came close to having a health study after the Alberta Cancer Board confirmed rare findings, rare cancers in Fort Chip. In 2009, there was a scientific team struck to look at putting together terms of reference for a health study. I was invited to be part of that team. We met for a year, put together terms of reference. And at the end of the year, the chair of the committee, who was himself a physician from Calgary, working in Fort Mac at the time and was the medical officer of health, he inserted a clause, but insisted that this clause be inserted, that industry should be part of the management oversight committee.
Brandi Morin: Wow.
Dr. John O’Connor: Leadership in Ford Chip totally rejected this. They rejected the idea of industry being part of it. As one of the chiefs said back then, this could be like the fox looking out for the hen house. So that was the closest that it came. The government, of course, walked away when industry was not accepted as being part of the committee.
But astonishingly, with all the recommendations, with all the independent findings, with the traditional knowledge, especially, which has been completely ignored, and the industry’s own admission [with] support of the government that these tailings bonds are designed to leak this toxic water to get into the layer of the river where fish spawn. So when you consider that, for instance, the findings of traditional knowledge keepers in Fort Chip of the deformities in fish, the fish with missing parts and —
Brandi Morin: I was there a year and a half ago, and I just went to one fish camp. I was only there for two hours. And out of that catch that they had been fishing all week, and out of this one catch that they brought in of like 50 fish or something, there were two deformed ones that I witnessed. And so I found that alarming, but apparently that’s kind of normal around there. I was stunned.
Dr. John O’Connor: And this was part of the traditional knowledge that I was made privy to when I started going up to Fort Chip in 2000. So these deformities and anomalies in fish downstream, obviously if you’ve got toxins in tailings ponds — And among those toxins are a group called naphthenic acids. And among other impacts, naphthenic acids are hormone disruptors. So fish are being born with these deformities, and they get into the food chain. And of course, traditional Fort Chip, eating fish and subsisting off the land. Is it any wonder that illnesses abound in Fort Chip?
And governments just have washed their hands. They’ve paid lip service, they’ve raised their hands to their face, oh my God, we’ve another spill. All the time realizing the spills that have been happening for decades are monumental compared to the latest spills. At one point, I was calculating just a few months ago that from a fraction of the 19 tailings ponds that line the river, that the seepages, leakages, amount to an Exxon Valdez disaster every week. One a week.
Brandi Morin: Which kind of disaster?
Dr. John O’Connor: The Exxon Valdez, [inaudible] went down up the coast of Alaska over 20 years [inaudible].
Brandi Morin: Every week. Yeah.
Dr. John O’Connor: [inaudible]
Brandi Morin: Yes. So Mandy, you are an expert. You’re a toxicologist. Can you explain this from your point of view? Now, from what I understand and from what you told me when I interviewed you in the doc that there’s human health studies that are only done initially and in relation to the environment, and then nothing else after that. And there are chemicals that aren’t even tested for, that they’re not looking for. Can you elaborate a little bit further on that, what that means and what needs to be done? Please and thank you.
Mandy Olsgard: Yeah, thanks, Brandi. Just quickly, I’ll correct. I didn’t actually work for industry. I’ve never worked for industry. So I was a consultant that would’ve done the assessments to get projects approved. And then I was with the regulator, and now I’m a consultant that, again, works for clients like Indigenous communities. So just quickly, I’ve never worked for industry.
Yeah, it’s an extremely complex system. And so, as Dr. O’Connor said, often Indigenous people observe tumors and fish, and those types of bumps and lesions. When we do ecological risk assessments, so when you are doing an assessment and applying for a project, there’s a lot of modeling and predictions in that assessment. One component is the ecological risk, and the other component is the human health risk. And both of these are done quite detailed and in depth. However, ecological risk assessments do not consider cancer. They don’t consider that chemicals can cause tumors and cancers in animals. So that’s not an endpoint they look at.
But in the human health risk assessment, they do look at cancer, and they’ve often predicted that there could be a potential higher rate of cancers. So the way we, in Western science terms, in Alberta, an acceptable rate of cancer, maybe from natural exposure or just your lifestyle, would be 1 in 100,000 people. So you could have 1 case of cancer in 100,000 people. That’s kind of our risk benchmark when we do do an assessment.
Brandi Morin: Because it’s way higher in Fort Chip.
Mandy Olsgard: And so that’s the thing. So when they do these assessments, that’s the risk benchmark, 1 in 100,000 people. And they use an incremental lifetime cancer risk to predict that. And almost across the board in these EIAs that industry have completed to get their projects approved, elevated cancers have been a potential risk.
Then a project gets approved and we move into the monitoring phase, and we see really heavy environmental monitoring. So the water, the air, I wouldn’t say the wildlife though, the mammals and the birds, the foods and the medicines, we don’t see a lot of monitoring there. But we do monitor the environmental media, water and sediment, those types of things.
And so this is where the disconnect really happens, in my view. Even though there were human health risks predicted, risk to the immune system, the skin very often, and cancer, there’s no monitoring component. Alberta Health doesn’t step in and support the Alberta Energy Regulator in developing a human-focused monitoring program. Health Canada doesn’t step in. Indigenous services Canada now. First Nation Indigenous Health Branch. All these different provincial and federal health regulatory agencies, they sit tangentially on the outside and hear about these things, but they’re not looking at an approved monitoring plan or a monitoring plan that industry’s submitting, and making recommendations about how to actually monitor, to understand and assess potential risks to the downstream communities or any member of the public, really.
And so this gets back to that conversation. We have the most stringent environmental regulations in Canada. I would agree. We have very stringent environmental legislation. The Canadian Environmental Protection Act, Alberta’s Environmental Protection Enhancement Act. These are very robust pieces of legislation. It’s the policies and the regulation, how they’ve been regulated and interpreted, and then how they actually regulate the industry using this robust legislation, that’s where we’re seeing these systemic flaws, in my view. And that’s really where I do my research.
Brandi Morin: Well, thank you. So what monitoring and testing specifically needs to be done, where you’re seeing the gaps? What needs to be tested for that’s not being done?
Mandy Olsgard: Yeah, so I would say you’d need to go back to the original human health risk assessments that were done in those project applications and look at the single chemicals or groups of chemicals and the health effects in humans that were predicted. And then you would have to work with health agencies, medical doctors, different groups of experts to design those monitoring programs. And so Alberta Health, through the Primary Care Network, puts out the community profile in the Wood Buffalo region. And they themselves are reporting that, through doctor’s visits and the health statistics, that there are higher rates of cancer in the Indigenous populations in the Wood Buffalo area compared to Alberta populations.
So this data’s being collected through health networks, but then we don’t see Alberta Health reaching into the regulator and acting on that. So that’s the first level of monitoring, I would say, what’s coming in through the public health networks when people visit their doctor, those high level statistics that we collect.
If you are observing something, then we would want to move into surveillance, as Dr. O’Connor’s talked about here, getting into the populations. And I’m not talking about going straight to monitoring people, but monitoring the foods people are eating, monitoring natural surface water bodies as a drinking water source. That is something I’ve fought for in my career in Alberta, just for industry and the Alberta Energy Regulator to acknowledge and assess rivers, and lakes, and muskeg as a drinking water source. So apply drinking water guidelines that consider humans. So right now, all the guidelines that are applied in the oil sands region by industry and the Regulator are focused on the protection of ecological receptors in those surface water bodies. They don’t consider cancer-causing agents. Groundwater’s a different situation — I’m talking about surface water.
So there’s low-hanging fruit here, applying guidelines that consider that humans are exposed to these chemicals through their interactions with the environment, traditional foods and medicines. Right there we’d have a better understanding of how those community members could be exposed. Then when you consider the Indigenous knowledge, what members are telling us day in and day out, we would be seeing more focused health studies, I think.
Brandi Morin: Amazing. Thank you, Mandy. I’m going to come back to you as well.
I would love to hear from Steven. So like I said, Steven represented Indigenous tribes in Ecuador for many years and was successful in gaining a judgment against Chevron for this mass of oil poisons that were left behind. They were kind of like tailings. They were pits, right? They just didn’t clean up. They didn’t clean up their mess.
Anyways, Steven, for those that you don’t know, he was prosecuted, these oil companies vindictively went after him. And he is a very renowned advocate, human rights advocate and environmental lawyer, and he’s a friend of mine. And I wanted to bring him in to gain your thoughts on this situation in regards to your own experiences.
Steven Donziger: Thank you, Brandi. And thank you for making a great film. It’s amazing.
Brandi Morin: Thank you.
Steven Donziger: And Chief Adam, pleasure, honor to meet you, sir. And I don’t know, Dr. O’Connor, I’m so bad with names. Mandy, Dr. Olsgard, thank you for your work. It’s so important that people come together in support of these frontline communities.
I’m just a white dude from the United States who got involved as a lawyer in this big case against Chevron in Ecuador. And when I hear these descriptions of what happened in Fort Chip, it reminds me very much of what I experienced at the hands, or what my clients, I should say, experienced at the hands of Chevron in Ecuador in the Amazon where Texaco, later bought by Chevron, went in there in the 1960s and essentially designed a system of oil extraction to pollute the environment. They didn’t even attempt to try to minimize the impacts. They essentially decided that they would dump, systematically, billions of gallons of cancer-causing toxic oil waste into streams and rivers that Indigenous peoples have been using for their drinking water, bathing, and fishing.
My experience is pretty simple. Industry will do anything it can if it thinks it can get away with it. You see this in Canada, you see it in the United States, you see it in Ecuador, and you see it everywhere I’ve looked at it. Without sufficient and robust regulation by authorities, there’s just nothing that will be done to stop this. And even with well-meaning regulators, often it’s very difficult to stop it because industry is so powerful. People who often, in government, who do their jobs conscientiously end up losing their jobs because they’re just not supposed to really do their jobs. They’re supposed to balance it all out such that industry always seems to have the upper hand. And in my experience, the only way to stop that is through frontline organizing, political organizing, really, to support the regulators and the scientists so they’re able to actually do their jobs correctly despite the massive resistance that industry often generates to block their work.
And it doesn’t surprise me to hear what’s happening in the Fort Chip area, as distressing as it is. But I will say that the film, and having panels like this, and doing advocacy, and understanding the relationship between advocacy and the need to do serious, rigorous science, is absolutely critical. Science, the scientific part of it always seems to be diminished by industry lobbying and advocacy efforts by what I would call BS industry scientists who really are out there to create confusion and to sow doubt about the truth, about the evidence. So it really does take, I think, a high degree of awareness of the tricks the industry uses in how they do their so-called science, which is what I would call junk science, versus how real science is done. And how, really, the truth needs to be put out there, and it’s only going to come through organizing, through social media, through independent journalists like Brandi.
Brandi, you do such amazing work, not only on this issue, but across so many issues. And so few journalists are really focused on these issues. Far too few. And it’s just unbelievable to me that why is it that you as a Cree Iroquois take on these burdens? Where are all the other journalists? Why are they not focusing on these issues? And it’s really important that we keep pushing and we get the journalistic community to write about this, and to publicize this, and that other Indigenous and First Nations peoples in Canada support Chief Adam and the work that his people are doing. It’s really, ultimately, at the end of the day, about political organizing and political power, supporting truth, and science, and fairness, and protection of the earth, and the planet. So there’s a lot going on here in this issue that, to me, symbolizes so much of what so many communities around the world are dealing with. And I salute all of you for taking this on and for pushing it, and I will do my best personally in my own little way to help you try to amplify what you’re doing.
Brandi Morin: Hay hay, Steven, thank you so much for joining us, for being here.
And Chief, you’ve been in this on and off. And you told me specifically when I was interviewing you in the film, you said, they could be giants and walk all over us, but you take out their knees and they will fall. And I know that you are very resolute in your belief of your rights as a nation, and how unjust this is, and where you stand. And I know that you said there was legal action prepping to be taken. But can you tell me, from your point of view, how you feel, what your stance is when you say, they might fight, but they’re going to fall, in regards to industry and getting justice for what’s happening?
Chief Allan Adam: Well, it’s quite evident that the evidence is out there, and it’s been out there for a long time. And when people say, how come they’re not fighting anymore? Why are they continuing to sell out? Well, when you look at the whole circumstances, we’ve raised this issue in regards to the AER, to the environment, to human health, to the growths that are happening in the fish, in the wild, food as well. There were even reports from our area that when a bull moose was taken down and it had a deformed horn on it and everything, and they did analysis on it and everything, and it had cancer. And it was still consumed.
That’s just the lifestyle of the people out there. They don’t know what’s going on. Nobody knows nothing. They didn’t talk to no scientists. But somebody took a look at that moose and took some samples of it and sent it in. And by the time it came back, the people were eating the moose already. This is continuing. I’ve seen stuff myself as a gatherer because I go out and use the land. I was out fall hunting this fall. We harvest our moose, we distribute it out to the people and families and everything, and it’s a continuation of tradition [inaudible]…
Brandi Morin: Is that me or Chief that’s frozen? I think Chief just froze up a bit.
Mandy Olsgard: Yeah, I think.
Brandi Morin: Yeah. So we’ll just wait for him to come back. Sometimes that happens. So yeah, I mean, it’s all connected and sometimes it’s like, okay, is it a choice between keeping tradition and culture alive, or your health? And ultimately, in Native communities, your culture and your tradition is intertwined with everything that you are as a human being. So it’s like stripping away of that. Dr. John, I see your hand is up. Go ahead.
Dr. John O’Connor: Yeah, it is interesting. One of the comments that was made after the Alberta Cancer Board report came out was that the community of Fort Chip was of great concern, but the sample size was too small to be considered significant. That’s one way of using statistics to push your point of view and your agenda. Very frustrating, totally inappropriate for the community of its location and what it’s exposed to.
Me and my wife were up in Inuvik in March of this year at the Dene Water Summit, worked for a couple of days, and listened to communities that had come from across the far north, accessible by boat, by fixed-wing. But their evidence, their traditional knowledge, and some white men’s knowledge as well, pointed to findings that they were getting in their own communities, their own little small sample sizes. Again, too small a community to be considered a problem. If we all banded together, all these communities, including Fort Chip, we would no longer have a small sample size.
Brandi Morin: So basically they said they don’t matter because they’re only a community of 1,200 people, is what you’re saying.
Dr. John O’Connor: Exactly. And also, the fact that they’re Indigenous. If this was happening south of Edmonton or south of Red Deer or south of Calgary, it wouldn’t have happened.
Brandi Morin: Yeah, I agree. Mandy.
Dr. John O’Connor: Environmental racism at its worst.
Mandy Olsgard: Yeah, I just want to interject. There’s no doubt in my mind there’s environmental racism happening in this region. Statistically, it’s very difficult to significantly prove an increased cancer rate in a small population. We see it all across the world, right? Toms River down in the States, it took them decades to prove that there was this increased cancer rate in children when it was just evident. There’s books written on it, and it was dyes being released. So I don’t want to discount that there is very clear environmental racism going on. But statistically speaking, small sample sizes for showing significant increases in cancer, it’s like a mathematical error, not entirely racism. So sometimes it’s a little bit difficult as a scientist working in this region, and I just want to make it clear that there’s a lot happening there.
Brandi Morin: Hay, hay, Mandy, thank you.
So Chief Adam, I just wanted to follow up. Okay, so we know that there’s been another spill… They’re not calling it a spill, it’s a “release” of water from one of Imperial Oil’s containment ponds from, it’s used as runoff and different things, but it was over the sediment guidelines, and that was released last week into the Muskeg River. Again, another failure. And it’s not just one company that’s doing this. We focus on Imperial Oil because it was where these significant releases happened last spring. We know that Suncor had a major release within that time period, and that these things are ongoing.
But Chief, this is something that you’re living with all the time. Right now we’re talking about it, and it’s in the media, but what’s going on behind the scenes? I know that tomorrow the AER is speaking to the environmental committee again in Ottawa. And apparently Laurie Pushor at first refused after he was called up to go and testify to them again. And he had to be summoned by the governmental committee to actually go, and that’s happening tomorrow. I don’t really know what’s going to happen. They’re going to be questioning the AER after it absolved itself in September of any wrongdoing in regards to following protocol to notify communities, even though it apologized.
What’s going on now, Chief? What’s happening right now in regards to your relationship and actions with the AER, and with oil industries, and governments?
Chief Allan Adam: Right now, this must be a hot topic, because I lost my phone service there because my phone overheated.
Brandi Morin: [Laughs] Yes.
Chief Allan Adam: But when you look at the whole structure of everything, there’s a lot of moving parts happening as we speak. And it’s unfortunate that we had to come to this component. It could have been all avoided if the Alberta Energy Regulator just lived up to its name: a regulator, energy regulator, but it failed to do so.
And I was getting to the point earlier that never before have we been into a situation like this where we had an opportunity to do something. Even though we talked about it in the past, we knew that there was something wrong, but there was never an opportunity to catch them in the cookie jar, I guess you could say. And over the years, we kept on fighting, telling people, telling the media, telling the public, that there’s something going on here, there’s something wrong here, the Alberta Energy Regulator is not doing nothing. They just stayed back, stayed silent. Everybody stayed silent on that notion.
Nothing came about until the spill happened. And when the spill happened, and then the Energy Regulator came out and started saying all these other things, and next thing you know, just like, what’s going on here?
And this is the evidence that we needed. This is what we needed as a nation to fight and to go after them under the treaty, because they broke the treaty in our regard. And because it states in the treaty that life will go on, life never even disturbed anything. As settlers coming in, you’ll continue your way of life undisturbed, you’ll be able to eat the food that you’ve eaten throughout the whole time you’re there, travel wherever you want to travel and everything. All these are playing into effects on our community and everything. And now we got the Alberta Energy Regulator.
We caught them, we got them for negligence. Poor response. We got them for anything. And that’s when I said to you earlier, you said it yourself, that they may be giants, but when you take out their knees, they’re going to fall. And it’s too bad that the Alberta Energy Regulator is going to fall this time because of poor mistakes that have been done that they should have carried out properly. I don’t think we would be in a scenario that we’re in today if it was carried out properly.
But when you take a look last year, the profits alone from the oil and gas industry here in Alberta is $47 billion to shareholders outside of Alberta. So you could tell the stakes are high here in this region, and it’s not going to get any better because of the demand for oil that’s out there.
And we live in a safe zone. Nobody’s doing nothing about it. We’re not in the Middle East where there’s war and everything. We’re not in Nigeria. We’re not all these other countries where there’s uncertainty. But here in Canada, here in Alberta, they have certainty, and they abused it. They abused it for their own power, for their own will, and they forgot about one thing: they forgot about the people that live downstream. And we the people who live downstream, we have had enough, and we’re going to do something about it. And I guarantee you, man, I’m quite 100% sure that the Alberta Energy Regulator will have a Christmas gift before Dec. 25, coming to them from the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation.
Brandi Morin: Yeah, I get that. I get that. So Chief, can I ask you, and I think this is kind of the consensus out there, that the AER is in bed with the governments as well as industry, and they’re supposed to be separate. Can you comment on that?
Chief Allan Adam: They’ve always been together. I myself called the CEO from the AER in the past to resign. And I asked him publicly, even through the media, to resign. And that was before Laurie came involved. And he was hired to regulate the Alberta Energy Regulator, but he was a former CEO for an oil company, or some kind of company… So you could tell that they… How would you say? They just keep rewashing and they keep bringing it back. They don’t have no solutions to anything. They hire people that were part of the problem, and then they hire them again to solve, to see what would happen. In my view, it doesn’t make sense to hire people that were part of the problem to create a solution.
Brandi Morin: Yeah. Wow.
Now, Steven, I have a question. Are you there? I’d like to know…
Steven Donziger: I’m here.
Brandi Morin: You’re there. Do you think, Steven, that, ultimately, it really comes down to power and politics? Is that the number one barrier? Nothing else is considered. It comes down to power and politics. Is that your opinion?
Steven Donziger: There’s a lot of factors. I do think, though, that the issue of politics, political structures, and political power tends to get not integrated with the legal and scientific strategies enough. So while I wouldn’t say that it’s only about politics and power, although I think that has a great deal to do with explaining why these things keep happening all over the world, I do think that we need to be smarter in terms of integrating different disciplines.
Even on this panel, we have a lawyer, we have scientists, we have frontline defenders, the chief, we have a journalist. All of those communities need to work very closely together and create these new alliances, this new broad-based movement. Of course, in service of the frontline defenders. It is Chief Adam and the people, the frontline Indigenous peoples in Canada and around the world that need our support, that are the frontline defenders of life on this planet. And so I think we need to be really smarter about how we integrate different disciplines, how we integrate different communities, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, toward our common goal of justice in this world and saving our planet.
So the awful situation of this killer water that you document in the film is a function of a power structure. The fact that the problem exists is a function of a power structure. It is not just one lax regulator. It’s not just one captured bureaucracy in Alberta. It is part of a global power structure created by an industry to keep extracting natural resources, mostly from under Indigenous lands around the world, to power this insane growth that the world economy, that is the owners of the world economy, need to keep maintaining their profits at the expense of the rest of us, the rest of us people, the rest of all of species, and the rest of life’s ecosystem. So I think that yeah, it does have a tremendous amount to do with politics and power.
Brandi Morin: But Steven, when you’re saying this, what makes them fall? I’m going to use Chief Adam’s words. If you take out their knees, they will fall. You had success. Even though it kind of backfired when the oil company came after you, but in the judicial system in Ecuador, you had success. What does it take to make them fall, so to speak?
Steven Donziger: Well, it takes a lot [laughs]. And we’re still battling, but I do think, and I think the chief makes a really good point in the film, is that in any given situation, in any given context, they can fall. You can make them fall. I think globally the structure is very difficult to dismantle overnight. It takes years and years of organizing. I do think though, that in particular situations, they can be defeated and justice can be won. And I’m hoping that obviously what’s happening, what you’re describing, what the chief is dealing with, is one of those situations where true accountability can be had.
I mean, obviously damage has been done already. If the regulators had been doing their job, this never would’ve happened. Now that it’s happened, there needs to be accountability, there needs to be compensation for the harms, and those who are responsible need to pay a price. They need to be moved out of their jobs, with responsible regulators put in.
But these people can fall. There’s no doubt in my mind. The fact that Chevron, just talking personally, spent literally $3 billion on 60 law firms and 2,000 lawyers in the United States to go after our team after we won a $10 billion pollution judgment tells you how weak they are. That’s just weak, how they perceive themselves as being really under threat and facing enormous risk.
And our situation was unusual for various reasons, but the fundamentals are the same. It’s a battle. They don’t want to pay for the pollution that they caused, and they want to spend money paying lawyers and lobbyists to keep First Nations at bay and their allies at bay so they’re never held accountable. And they calculated it’ll be cheaper to pay lobbyists and lawyers than it will be to pay the people they harmed. And that calculation is at the heart of this entire battle. And it’s up to us to change the calculus.
In other words, it has to be so expensive for them to do this because they know they can’t get away with it. They know there will be costs to them, could be legal, could be financial, could be reputational, it could be Brandi writing an article that’s part of the cost. The chief, the organizing, it’s a hassle. These bureaucrats go to bed, they can’t feel good about themselves at some level. So all of that factors into it. Yes, they can be defeated on an ad hoc basis.
I think the broader picture is a little more complicated, but it all starts in your community, and it all starts on battles like this, whether they be Fort Chip or whether they be in Lago Agrio, Ecuador. The same battles, they can be won. It just takes interdisciplinary organizing and lots of good leadership and alliance building, and obviously some level of resources. So it can definitely be done. I didn’t mean to leave the picture that it was all…
Brandi Morin: No, it’s all good. No, thank you, Steven. That’s so important, that perspective, even for me to learn to think about what maybe ACFN and others are going into.
But did anybody want to speak to that question, how the authorities and so on are just dismissing the concerns of the people on the ground when we hear about these things happening, and how they’re so easily able to do that? Does anybody want to speak to that, Chief or Dr. John?
Dr. John O’Connor: Oh, yeah. My perspective, Brandi, having lived in Alberta for the last 30 years, is that industry owns this province. There’s a very blurry line between who is a politician and who’s a CEO of an oil company. When industry can parachute into Fort Chip and have consultation with the community at the community hall and provide a lavish meal and door prizes and cash and present this PowerPoint description of what they’re doing accompanied by politicians, totally supported by politicians, it is no wonder that the little voices from the likes of Fort Chip or other little communities downstream, those voices are not heard at all. And the evidence that’s been produced and publicized, backed by robust, reputable science, they just wait. The headline disappears a day or two or three after, and it’s gone. It’s a very different matter at grassroots level downstream, but very easy for authorities to ignore.
Brandi Morin: Yeah. Chief, I just want to give Chief a moment to respond too, and then we’ll go back to Mandy.
Chief Allan Adam: It’s a challenge when you look at all these things and everything. And as a leader, you have to look at all sides and everything, and you’ve got to do the proper analysis to do what’s best for the community. One of the things that I always look for, and maybe Mandy could answer this one, or Dr. O’Connor, with all the damages that are done already within the region, is it repairable? And if it’s not repairable, is it safe for the community of Fort Chipewyan residents to remain in Fort Chip or do we have to pack up and become environmental refugees? I think that would be the most prominent question that could be answered here today. And if that could be answered, then we’ll determine what’s our fate from here.
Brandi Morin: Dr. O’Connor?
Dr. John O’Connor: Yeah. Truth and reconciliation has to start with honesty and accountability, and if this start was made in Alberta along those lines, and an admission of the harm that’s been caused by industry, and an undertaking to put a moratorium on the development or the maintenance of these tailings ponds, that would go a long way towards mitigating the damage or at least preventing issues from happening in the future. Obviously, independent authorities, independent science that have nothing to do with Alberta, nothing to do with industry need to be involved in this. And they have been over the years, but like I said, their voices have been ignored. But I think it must start with a discussion, a conversation, a candid, honest attempt at accountability, and then taking on the responsibility, and then moving from there.
Brandi Morin: Hay hay. Mandy, is the damage done? Is it too late?
Mandy Olsgard: Yeah. Technology exists to remediate and remove the chemicals that are being placed in the tailings ponds, that are being emitted in the air. Scientifically and technologically, we can address all the chemicals. And from what I hear from communities, other than water levels and the drop in water levels, which is really caused by the dams in British Columbia, to a greater extent, the chemical emissions from oil sands can be controlled. But it is all about dollars and cents and stakeholder profits. So until we see that shift in society, and pushing for it, and a regulator that’s requiring oil sands to clean up, we’re in the situation we’re in.
And I can’t speak for any individual member, but I know what I hear from members. I’m in Fort Chipewyan all the time. And so that situation’s not going to change until we see either the federal government step in and require these technologies to actually be used to remove the chemicals that could be causing harm and the studies that tell us.
So Chief, to be honest, we need to see the studies. I do independent research with your community, with several other communities. We’re trying to fill the gap, but we’re this small group who recognizes this and is seeing this. So if we can get these larger groups, the money behind us, a true regulator that’s looking at the data being provided to them and then making real action.
Like when you have leaking tailings ponds, there’s a requirement to remediate groundwater that’s been contaminated. This is done in every other sector, every other energy sector, but the oil sands is a money making business. We had the CEO of Suncor come out and say they’re getting back to the fundamentals. We’re in a position where we now know quite honestly where industry stands. So we need a true regulator to turn this ship around.
What I was going to show you, to me, this speaks volumes. You don’t need a master’s in toxicology. This is the surface water. This was the industrial wastewater report that Imperial sent to the AER. Everywhere you see yellow is an exceedance of a guideline.
Brandi Morin: Wow.
Mandy Olsgard: That’s the approved water that’s released daily, continuously.
Brandi Morin: Wow.
Mandy Olsgard: So this is what —
Brandi Morin: That’s just the approved?
Mandy Olsgard: This is the approved. So when you see an incident that was a higher concentration, add more yellow, turn that yellow red because it’s actually over a limit. Even higher. This is what’s acceptable on a daily basis from 43 approved releases, 36 of which release. That’s surface water. That’s not even talking about tailings ponds. This is what the Regulator receives, their scientists review — And they are good scientists, I believe, who are technical experts in their field — But to make a decision, they need support of the leaders within the Alberta Energy Regulator, the management, and that’s where we find industry is having a say at stopping decisions.
Brandi Morin: Absolutely.
Mandy Olsgard: Anyone can speak to this. We go to the groundwater issue. This is what was submitted by Imperial, one of the two monitoring wells offsite. So you can see that elevated naphthenic acids in that red box, go to the far right-hand side. That’s been increasing since, arguably, 2017. So I don’t say it lightly when I say they knew that tailings pond was leaking, something was changing in the environment. This is Imperial’s own reporting to the Alberta Energy Regulator years before the environmental protection order. And I’m not doing this to scare people. It’s not a fear tactic. This is what Alberta Energy Regulator receives monthly, annually, weekly, daily from industry, from oil sands operators, and they are allowed discretionarily to make all decisions on that.
We don’t see it publicly. I had to request these reports from the Regulator, independently review them. That takes some education, experience. But anyone can read this and say, I have questions. And then when you hear what communities are telling us about what they’re seeing changing on the land, to me, that’s when the story became inexcusable and unignorable, as a consultant, as a scientist. I couldn’t do my job ethically working at the Regulator because I couldn’t follow through on the decisions that I knew that needed to be made.
Brandi Morin: So what needs to be done specifically in this instance? Is it the health studies? Is it the reporting, the regulating? Mandy, can you break it down for us in layman’s terms? From your standpoint with seeing these graphs and this information, what needs to be done?
Mandy Olsgard: I feel like Steven could be better here. I sit from a position where we’re in a province that is so divisive right now. If you don’t support the oil and gas industry, you are an enemy of the state. It is the language we see coming out of the premier’s office and pervading into every decision being made. As a scientist, I actually can’t even figure out how to navigate it. And I’ve had to take time off recently just to understand if I maybe knew what I was doing. The gaslighting scientists in this province are experiencing right now is real, and it’s hard to walk the line and keep doing what we’re doing because what’s right and wrong, what’s black and white?
It’s very difficult because industry is so well organized in their lobbying effort. They do studies. I read that study and I come to a completely different conclusion than those scientists. The science, the study might actually be quite robust, but how it’s been interpreted, and then how COSIA or CAP or registered industry lobbying agencies then move that through Pathways Alliance, it is so concerted. As a single scientist, I actually can’t answer that because I don’t know anymore, but I know what I’m looking at, and I know we have an issue with chemical exposures in that region. So I don’t know, Steven, if you can add to that, how to move this forward.
Brandi Morin: And he did speak to that. And then I had a question like, okay, so these health studies, somebody that’s watching wondered what is the estimated cost and lengths for these health impact assessments and these studies? What are the barriers to getting them done other than industry not wanting to be found out?
Mandy Olsgard: Well, industry controls the flow of money in this region, whether it’s to scientists like me often, applying for something, or paying the Regulator’s levy, or putting in for the liability, or working with communities through agreements. I think this is all pretty well known, that industry controls that flow of money. And so even when we’re proposing to do studies, they have the ability to vet those and be like, well, remove this component. Do this. Not always. We go for grants and research as well, but yeah.
Brandi Morin: How feasible is an independent study? Is it a matter of resources, or do you know?
Mandy Olsgard: Yeah, for sure. There’s independent scientists who do this type of work. I’m an independent consultant. I can take contracts from whoever has the money to fund them. And so you need a group of independent consultants which are willing to do this type of work and maybe publish a study and results that might be an opposition to a study that came out from a different researcher. You have to have that space to be able to speak to it.
And thankfully, we are in Canada. We have the space. If we were in a different jurisdiction, it could be very different to speak out as a scientist. I still feel fairly free to do that. So you need scientists who are willing to take that stand.
I’m the only independent toxicologist that doesn’t work for large consulting firms that support industry. There’s a handful in the region. And then you have to find contaminated groundwater, like contaminant hydrogeologists, who don’t work for the big industry consulting firms. So it’s a lack of resources, I think, to get the work done. It’s a lack of funding for this independent work.
And then you have communities who, Chief, maybe you can speak to it, people just want to live. They didn’t take on the job of fighting big industry so that they can go about their way of life. Does everybody want that? Hunting season comes, members are like, fine, Mandy, we’ll meet with you, but we’re meeting out in the bush, right? People just want to live. So it’s really complex, I think there’s a lot of factors, Brandi, but yes, it’s absolutely possible to do these studies. Science is there. Science and technology are not limitations to anything we’re discussing here today.
Steven Donziger: Can I have a quick word?
Brandi Morin: Yeah.
Steven Donziger: So first of all, Mandy, thank you for that. You really nailed it, I think, in many respects. Now, all these studies can be done in Canada, and generally in the United States, with money. It’s a question of money. Industry has massive sums of money to do their fake studies, and the communities usually have almost no money, no money or almost no money to do the studies they need to do, even if they can access the expertise to do a study, to know how to do a study, to design the study, to do the right data collection. And I understand what Mandy is saying because there are very, very few independent scientists in the world who are willing to take on industry because most scientists, unfortunately, just like most lawyers work for wealth and power, most scientists work for industry because that’s where the jobs are. And what I think has to happen is really two things.
One is there needs to be a pot of money created to do independent science in conjunction with the communities by qualified scientists. And I think that money should come from the industry. The industry should be forced — And this is where you get back into the politics — Should be taxed, basically, on their profits to put aside funds so the communities can do their own independent assessments of the impacts of operations on their lands, water, et cetera. There’s got to be some independent source of funds that should come from industry.
Now, obviously industry would fight this. Obviously there’s probably not a lot of elected officials in Alberta who would support this. But put it out there, put the aspiration out there. You never know what might come of it. Suddenly there’s some big-ass spill, and then there’s a whole impetus politically to do something. And then your proposal that no one paid attention to for six months is sitting there like, hey, what about that proposal proposed by Chief Adam in conjunction with this toxicologist to tax the industry to fund for studies?
And also, I think in the scientific community, we’re seeing more and more in the United States small independent groups of scientists who understand exactly what Mandy is talking about and are trying to design systems or structures where they can do the independent science, understanding they will never work for industry their whole lives. You really have to make a choice as a scientist. You’re going to work for industry or you’re going to work for communities. And you really can’t do both because once you start working for communities, industries won’t hire you. Once you start working for industries, you’re tainted.
There’s a group that I work with in the United States in the Ecuador case called Stratus Consulting, just one example of a few. They have like 75 scientists, and they did almost all their work for municipalities, and they worked for the communities of Ecuador once we got funds to pay them. It wasn’t as expensive as scientists who worked for industry. but I also found that these are the best scientists.
A lot of the industry scientists, the scientists that Chevron used to try to create doubt and to do all sorts of what I would call BS science were really second, third rate scientists from really marginal programs, but they were more than willing to sell their souls and whatever little expertise they had for political purposes. They really were political scientists. They were on the other side. They would use their studies or their non-studies, or they designed the questions in such a way that they knew the answers in advance, and they would use them to help industry. And then Chevron’s PR machine would put out their study, see, this is a new study, blah, blah, blah. But then you’d look at the study and realize it was completely flawed on a thousand levels.
So it’s really important, I think, to find resources, to put out a proposal to tax the industry to pay for independent science, and to organize so the communities, Chief Adam, know the available toxicologists and independent scientists that can help. And they don’t necessarily, by the way, have to be from where you are. They can be from the United States, they can be from Ontario, they can be from Nova Scotia, they can be from British Columbia. Science is science, and many people are willing to travel to do the work to give people like Mandy support.
Brandi Morin: Hay hay, Steven. Chief?
Chief Allan Adam: Brandi, when it comes to these issues in regards to some of the stuff, you’ve got to take a look at what the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and other First Nations are doing in regards to the area. We have our own community-based monitoring program that’s up and going, which is funded by industry. We collect the data on the water issue. We start taking collections from animals as well as they’re being harvested, just to get a collection and to get the numbers that we’re out there telling everybody that there’s something wrong here. Not only to that, just recently, probably within a month or so, we’ve just introduced a new policy for the nation, and it’s a water guideline policy, that if industry and government doesn’t meet the threshold of safe drinking water for our community and for our members, then we’re going to question everything.
And it’s a game changer for industry because we are, as a sovereign nation, we have the ability to create laws to protect our own people. And it states that as long as we don’t create policies or laws to protect our people, the governments will create these for us. So now we went beyond that point, and we’re totally not reliant on the government, both federally and provincially. We’re doing this on our own. We’re putting our own guidelines in place, and we’re saying that in order for you to get approved, you have to meet our standards of water level. And if it’s not at our level, then it does not get approved, and we have to do something about it, and we have to bring it to that state of mind. And that’s probably going to be another game changer in light of everything that’s going on. And we developed that water policy in light of what had happened over the last year and years past.
So this is one of the things that gives us more sovereign rights as a nation, because under treaty you had to be a sovereign nation to sign treaty. And when we signed treaty, we were a sovereign nation back then, and we had our own environmental laws, we had our own governance laws, and we had our own space about where we had to go and travel at all times. And today, now we’re just secluded to one area, and the environmental component is way out of whack. There is no conductor at the helm. We got a ghost train going out of control.
Brandi Morin: I didn’t know about that policy, Chief. That sounds incredible. And does that come into effect immediately, or how does that work?
Chief Allan Adam: Once we get this thing and everything, then we’re going to send notifications out that these are going to happen. And I gotta take it to our team, Lisa, the LRM team. I think Mandy might have been involved with it as well too, to develop all these things. And we’re doing these things from our own perspective and from our own nation, and we’re doing it with our own funding and all these stuff because not only do we want to walk the talk, we want to do it and make sure it gets done because we’re tired of relying on government, and we’re tired of relying on industry to make things happen for us.
Brandi Morin: Wow. And then these initiatives as well as the lawsuit that I understand is coming, it’s not like the lawsuit is going to fix anything immediately. These things take years. But they are initiatives, like these policies that you’re developing, that it’s going to help?
Chief Allan Adam: That’s going to help our nation, yeah.
Brandi Morin: I would love to see that when it comes out and a copy of it, because that must be pretty, your nation, how often is that done that you know of?
Chief Allan Adam: This would be the first one done in that regard to environmental policies, for the protection of water and all these other things. And it’s just one of many that probably could keep coming down because we know our rights. I’ve said it before in the past at public meetings, in our own meetings, that if we ever wanted to get anything done, we would have to create our own constitution out of that. We have to create our own laws and everything and stuff like that. So we’re working on a constitution, and out of the constitution we will develop our own environmental laws, our own health laws, and everything that goes with it, and stuff like that. So it’s basically a start in some way, even if it’s a little small start, it’s a start that we’re doing something.
Brandi Morin: And that’s something that industry and governments or whoever, they have to adhere to because of your sovereignty as a nation, and you’re creating those laws and policies?
Chief Allan Adam: Yep. They have to because it’s our law and it’s our guidelines, and if they don’t meet the guidelines, and if they exceed the guidelines, then there’ll be damages reputed to it.
Brandi Morin: Wow, that’s interesting. That’s pretty cool. Mandy, did you want to speak to that?
Mandy Olsgard: Yeah, I just want to say thank you, Chief, for bringing up that project. It’s a great example of how communities and First Nations and sometimes Métis communities are bringing the science that we’re talking about here to the Regulator.
So that project specifically is called the Water Quality Criteria For Indigenous Use. Took us four years, almost five years. And because we saw independent scientists like myself and I have a team of other scientists, Dr. Thompson and Dr. Thomas Dick that I worked with, so water quality experts, social scientists, human geographers, to actually work with ACFN and a few other nations to understand how communities use water, rely on water, their rights tied to water, how it supports their lives. And then we develop the criteria to protect those. Their water use categories consider drinking water, traditional plant medicines, foods, and then you have guidelines, criteria that protect those uses for surface water and sediment. We’re doing the same thing for terrestrial ecosystems. So soil, forest, the animals, and the birds and that. So moving those things forward.
But these criteria are more stringent than anything government will have ever required industry to use. So like Chief spoke to, it’s getting it into policy linked to rights and moving it forward because this is what it takes to protect human health. Humans are not distinct from the environments that they live in and rely on, and especially in these communities.
And it is available. It’s on ACFN’s website. It’s a huge report. Hundreds of pages, thousands with the appendices, but ACFN has made that available for everyone to review. We just went to a conference and presented on that research with other Indigenous groups who are doing this from British Columbia and across Canada and internationally. So there is a body of scientists and communities doing this work and pushing it forward. So thank you, Chief, for opening that, and bringing some positivity and solutions.
Brandi Morin: Wow. That is. That’s something. You feel like often when you’re doing this work or doing these stories, it’s like you don’t find that you have the solutions. And this is representing some of that. We’re going to wrap up here in a few minutes. I was wondering, Chief, if you had anything to say to the fed or provincial and AER about where things are at right now? What would you say to them?
Chief Allan Adam: As a chief, I think we’re at a state of emergency in regards to the environment, in regards to what’s happening with our ecosystem. We need to get down to the nitty-gritty and bring it all out and notify the people. Are we safe in the community? And the only ones that could tell us and give us the answer to that is the government agent bodies like the AER, Environment Canada, DFO, all these agencies could play a part in doing something, but unfortunately they choose not to do so in that light itself.
Is there hope? There’s always hope. It’s just a matter of how much effort do you want to put into it? And right now with this happening and everything, it’s a big game changer for ACFN. It’s a big game changer for everybody. Everybody involved with what’s going on sees it’s a big game changer. And if we don’t do it right and we don’t correct the problem, it’s just going to get worse from here on in. It ain’t going to get better. We have a lot of legal rights that are on our side. I wouldn’t know how to say it, but maybe Steve or Mandy or even Dr. O’Connor could say, we finally got them.
Brandi Morin:
Hay, hay, Chief. Steven? Wrap up words, respond?
Steven Donziger:
Well, let me just say I’m talking a lot, but there’s a lot I don’t know as well. And the things I said on this panel, I really say with great humility and respect for the chief in particular and the other panelists. But I do think the monitoring program that the First Nation is doing in Fort Chip is really significant. That’s the basis for information that can really be used with the support of scientists who can help interpret it to raise a lot of help with these regulators and call them out and capture, I think, more support around the nation of Canada.
I’ve seen this a lot. I’m down here and I haven’t traveled for a bunch of years, by the way. Chevron took my passport, otherwise I’d be up there visiting if I could. I really mean that. But it seems to me there have been a couple of instances in recent years where First Nations have captured the imagination of the whole country. I think the Wet’suwet’en to some degree with the —
Brandi Morin: And internationally. Yes.
Steven Donziger: And internationally. And I think this film is the basis to project this out much further. So there might be ways for all of us to think about strategies to do that in light of the film and in light of the opportunity that the film offers.
Brandi Morin: Just a second. So just saying that the chief, one of the people that works with the chief have said that they’re showing the film during one of their sessions at COP in Dubai. I don’t know how big of a difference that’ll get. I know that that’ll get to these officials that they’re giving information to at COP. But I think it really does need to get to a wider audience in order to create that grassroots awareness and pressure. Is that what you’re saying, Steven?
Steven Donziger: Yeah. And I would say yes, I am. And I would say two other things, which is… Am I, can you see me? Yeah, there I am.
Brandi Morin: Yeah, I can see you.
Steven Donziger: So the other thing is think big. It is just as much energy to go to the premier of Alberta as it is to the prime minister of Canada. It’s just as much energy to go to the environment minister of Alberta as it is to the environment minister of the whole country. And if Alberta is so captured by industry, I think we ought to consider strategies to go outside Alberta to get pressure back into Alberta, because this is embarrassing. For a country that purports, at least in its rhetoric, to care about First Nations, this is not good.
And I think that, again, affords opportunities. In other words, there’s never really a problem or a resistance that is out there that doesn’t have some major opportunity in it to try to flip the frame and really advance what you’re trying to do.
Now, having said all that, it’s easy for me as an armchair person in the US to say all this stuff. You folks are doing the actual work. I am highly sympathetic to what Mandy said. People just want to live. It’s not your fault they did this. You just want to live as you’ve lived, as your people have lived for millennia. So why is it on you that you have to deal with this shit? Why is it on you that you have to listen to a guy like me say you need to organize politically? Why is it on you that you got to find scientists and money to do the studies? So it’s hard, and I get it, and nothing but sympathy.
But I’m telling you, these people, the chief is right. They can be slayed, they really can. And how it gets done, I’m not really sure. There’s a lot of good ideas. The chief probably knows best. The monitoring program that you’re doing is phenomenal. I’m really happy to hear about that because that can be used to parlay into something more. And I’m willing to help to the extent that I can.
So I don’t know what else I can say except I have tremendous respect for all of you folks, starting with the chief and all your colleagues and the scientists and Brandi, you, it’s amazing what you’re doing to raise the profile of this issue and let’s just see where it goes with the film and what kind of opportunities that might create.
Brandi Morin: Yeah. Hay hay, Steven. I’m again grateful for your time to be here to share your expertise and your perspective.
I just had one more quick question for Chief, and then I was going to give Dr. John a wrap up. So Chief, I’m just wondering, how are other First Nation leadership in regards to this issue? I know that you’re on the Treaty VIII executive Council, I believe. And do you know, is there any unified front to support these kinds of issues? Again, we have focused on Fort Chip, but Fort Chip is not the only community that is experiencing this up there. But is there anything going on politically within the assembly of First Nations or within your treaty area?
Chief Allan Adam: No, there’s nothing in that regard going on, other than the fact that business is normal. I could say this for a fact that I’ve been elected official chief for 16 years, and I’ve been on council for four years, so I’ve been in council 20 years, and I’m going into another four-year term. And I haven’t really had to deal with being the chief of the nation other than the fact of fighting with industry and government with the environment. Ever since I’ve taken the position as the chief, and raising the concerns, and the dilemma of everything that’s going on.
If the proper mechanisms were in place and everything to counter all of these things and the resources were there, could you imagine what we could have built and did right in regards to how to develop an industry, to protect the environment, to protect the community, to protect the health, and to provide education and let the people be aware of what’s happening at all times. If we were to do that, we wouldn’t be in a predicament that we are in today.
And it goes to show that ignorance and racism still plays a big part here in the oil sands region. And that we as First Nations people are looked down on, not looked upon, and that’s going to change.
Brandi Morin: Wow. And any word from the MP or follow up from the premier’s office or anything? I know it’s kind of early in regards to response to the film, but —
Chief Allan Adam: I find this ironic that COP28 that’s happening, the Alberta government is sending a delegation of 150 to go and tell —
Brandi Morin: Oh my gosh.
Chief Allan Adam: …To go and tell the world that everything in Alberta is fine, nothing wrong. And we are sending a delegation of probably four, and we’re also sending some of the footage and documentaries and stuff like that down there. And we’re going to let the world know that this is happening in our backyard, and it’s time to expose the whole thing, and let everybody know that what Canada’s been telling the UN and what other government agencies have been telling the UN about how good things are in Canada and in Alberta with the First Nations communities, we’re there to go and tell the world that everything is not good.
Brandi Morin: Wow. It’s really representative of these giants that we’re talking about when you’re talking about these numbers of 150 and all of these resources, and then you’re sending four people to go there and speak the truth of what you’re experiencing. I mean, wow. Wow.
Chief Allan Adam: So that just goes to show how much of a cover-up they’re willing to do and to take and to lobby all these other groups of people whatsoever. But we will make a note on this, and it’s time that we do what we have to do. And I’ve always said it before, we have to go to the UN and expose Canada for what they are, and we have to expose Alberta for who they are.
Brandi Morin: Hay, hay, Chief, thank you.
And then John, Dr. John.
Dr. John O’Connor: As Mandy and Steven have said, this is a very complex situation. About 12 years ago, myself, my wife, and Andrew Nikiforuk, a legendary environmental journalist, were invited and participated in a Scandinavian venture through Nordic Greenpeace to publicize what’s happening downstream. We actually were given shares in Statoil to be able to address their AGM, their shareholders AGM in Stavanger in Norway, about 2010.
And we got actually a topic for debate. Do we stay in the, what was called the oil sands, the tar sands, or not? We got an opportunity to actually go on stage and address the shareholders. And for the first time in their history, they had to vote. Now, about 99% voted to stay. 1% said no. These are the shareholders, and they withdrew. And of course since then, Statoil have left the tar sands.
So I think going abroad and revealing the story, informing people, educating people just with the honest, real picture of what’s happening at a grassroots level, that is so important.
2008, we had a call from Richard Rockefeller. So Richard Rockefeller was actually a family doctor in Maine, but one of the Rockefeller family. I was living in Nova Scotia at the time, and we were back and forth. So he set up a time to meet us in Nova Scotia, flew his plane into Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. We sat together for half a day. He’d been up to Fort Chip because of the issues that were highlighted about two or three years before. Confirmed what we’d found. And after listening to us, he said, John, he said, don’t stop what you’re doing. You’re on the right track. And this is coming from Standard Oil, the Standard Oil family.
So there’s awareness. There are bureaucrats and CEOs who I’m sure can’t sleep at night. Once the information is out there, once people realize what’s happening, that is so important. It’s not the only thing. Like I said, the picture is very complex.
A few years ago, Syncrude put pressure on the MCFN chief regarding their CEO. Their CEO had gone around the world, publicized what was going on in Fort Chip. He said, this will have implications for your nation if you don’t rein in the CEO. So unfortunately, the CEO had to quieten down. But to illustrate how powerful they were, Syncrude canceled two contracts that the MCFN had on site just to show that, economically, we hold the purse.
And that, unfortunately, is the issue. There’s no other show in town. If it wasn’t for big oil, what would Fort Chip look like now? It would be a healthier place. That’s another of the complexities of this issue. We must continue to talk, and to publicize, and to answer questions, and spread it as wide as we can.
Brandi Morin: Thank you. Well, hay hay, everybody. We’re going to wrap up now, but I just want to thank each and every one of you for participating in this discussion. I respect and admire your knowledge and your experiences and your input into this. And I just pray that injustices such as this one that we’re discussing, the toxins and the corruption that’s happening to Fort Chipewyan, that this is addressed. And my dog wants to make an exit appearance, so I’m going to wrap it up and say hay hay. Go watch Killer Water. Stay tuned. I will be following the nation of Fort Chipewyan. I’m going to follow them from here as we go to COP. Thank you, everybody.
Dr. John O’Connor: Thank you.
Chief Allan Adam: Thank you.
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