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Professor quits oil-sands panel over lack of aboriginal representation
News Articles Featured | Globe and Mail | February 02, 2011
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Five days after Alberta Environment announced a controversial panel to overhaul monitoring of the oil sands, one of its members quit citing concerns over a lack of aboriginal representation and confidentiality requirements.
Helen Ingram, a professor emeritus at the University of California – Irvine, submitted her resignation to Environment Minister Rob Renner on Tuesday.
She cited timing conflicts with her ongoing projects; questioned the rules around confidentiality that she felt would limit her ability to consult with other experts; and echoed questions raised last week as to why the 12-member panel has no aboriginal representative.
“I’m disappointed that she wasn’t able to at least attend one of the meetings and find out whether her concerns were justified,” Mr. Renner said outside a caucus meeting Wednesday morning.
He said the confidentiality rules were just “a draft” and would have been discussed by the panel, and added that the panel was expected to consult with all groups, including aboriginal communities near oil-sands development.
“I don’t know that you can have representation from literally every group that would be represented on the panel, but there is expectation that the panel would be consulting with and seeking the advice of expertise and points of view that would extend beyond those represented specifically on the panel,” Mr. Renner said.
Dr. Ingram specializes in public policy and environmental management. Mr. Renner said she will be replaced as soon as possible.
It’s another blow to the panel, which is less than one week old. Environmentalists question the appointment of Hal Kvisle, a former CEO of pipeline giant TransCanada Corp., as co-chair. The board also includes David Pryce, who is a vice-president of operations for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the oil industry’s top lobby group, as well as Bruce Carson, a former policy adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
The presence of the three men left environmental groups questioning whether the monitoring regime will change.
“It’s questionable whether these members, who are so deeply tied to the oil industry, will even be willing to acknowledge the glaring holes in the province’s monitoring system, let alone do anything to address them,” Greenpeace campaigner Mike Hudema said.
Mr. Renner shrugged off the complaints, saying the majority of the panel is made up of academics and that oil and government representatives are needed for both administrative expertise and to ensure the panel’s recommendations have “practical applications.”
“There’s always that ongoing perceived conflict over whether it should be purely scientific-driven, as opposed to industry,” he said, noting Mr. Kvisle’s co-chair is veteran university administrator Howard Tennant. “It’s important that this system not only be credible, but it has to be functional as well. And having some expertise there with a little bit of business background will help, I think, with that functionality.”
His response was backed by David Schindler, a University of Alberta researcher whose research has called into question government claims that oil sands rivers remain pristine. Dr. Schindler said the bureaucrats’ presence on the panel was confusing, but there was enough academic heft to allow it to design an appropriate system. “I have faith that while few in number, the [academic] bona fides will prevail,” Dr. Schindler said.
Alberta’s patchwork environmental monitoring program has been under fire over the past two months. A federal advisory report released in December said the program had “significant shortcomings” in its design. “Until this situation is fixed, there will continue to be uncertainty and public distrust in the environmental performance of oil-sands industry and government oversight,” the panel warned.
A third-party review of the Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program (an arm’s-length, industry-funded and industry-led group meant to watch for water pollution) released this week noted a host of failures to provide information to the public, a lack of baseline data, and a shortfall in monitoring.
Even amid the questions, Alberta has continued to press forward. Last week, the province approved a new open-pit oil-sands mine (its ninth) relying on the same RAMP data that’s now being widely questioned.
“I think it [the approval] shows that despite governments in Alberta and Canada acknowledging there are real failures in environmental monitoring in the oil sands, clearly the business of managing oil-sands growth as quickly as possible is proceeding,” said Simon Dyer, policy director of the Pembina Institute, a Calgary-based environmental think-tank.
Tagged with: alberta, monitoring, rob renner, water management, helen ingram
