On Sunday June 1, Prime Minister Mark Carney and all of Canada’s premiers (or delegates in the case of British Columbia) congregated in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan to discuss matters of national importance. At the top of the agenda was expediting projects of national significance, specifically energy and infrastructure projects – a major commitment from the recent Liberal campaign.
Premiers walked away from the talks satisfied. Even Danielle Smith and Scott Moe, both ardent Liberal Party opponents and vocal proponents for the development of fossil fuel infrastructure, went from incessant wailing to cautious optimism toward Carney’s Liberals.
At the same time, over 10,000 people in 26 communities have been evacuated due to forest fires in Saskatchewan – and we have just entered the month of June. Our neighbours in Manitoba have had 19,000 people displaced. Air quality in Montreal on June 6 was among the worst in the world due to the smoke.
In both prairie provinces, communities are burning, livelihoods are being uprooted and futures plunged into uncertainty. The vast majority of those impacted are Indigenous people, their land and homes devastated by the fires – a devastation they continue to face the full brunt of, despite having contributed to it microscopically.
If Smith gave the same business pitch to the people who have had to evacuate from the apocalypse in our North, I’m sure they would completely understand how those 165 billion barrels of oil would “benefit” them too.
The Prime Minister and premiers were fortunate that the day of their arrival and the Monday following were smoke-free. The days prior, Saskatoon was blanketed in an orange grey haze that is becoming far too familiar and normalized. Back in 2015, Saskatoon experienced a shock when residents woke up to what looked like a scene from Blade Runner. Today these scenes are part of everyday summer life, waking up to the smell and sight of smoke. The weather apps on our phone tell us the daily forecast and the air quality, the shock now muted and tuned to apathy and anxiety.
The reality of this devastation was completely ignored. In turn so was the gigantic elephant in the room that tied the first ministers meeting to the forest fires: climate change.
Although these fires were “human caused,”1 as premier Scott Moe quickly rushed to clarify (much quicker than his response to the destruction of communities and displacement of people), it is an undeniable fact that these fires are as catastrophic and cataclysmic as they are because of climate change2,3,4. As our Earth warms, our forests become drier, our precipitation becomes less frequent and more sporadic, storms become intense and torrential – all of this creates the perfect combination of conditions for these immense fires. The situation has deteriorated so much now that we have “zombie” fires, which smolder under the snow during the winter and reignite as soon as melt arrives. This warming is explicitly anthropogenically caused, through the combustion of fossil fuels – and we can be even more specific about which class of individuals have accelerated and driven this process (spoiler: it’s the rich).5,6,7,8
Between our global climate crisis and the projects being advocated, we see bizarre conflicting priorities.
To hear Alberta Premier Danielle Smith preach – “we’ve got 1.8 trillion barrels of oil, bitumen, and about 165 billion barrels is recoverable in today’s technology, even at $60 oil, that’s a $9 trillion asset and you simply wouldn’t have a policy of leaving a $9 trillion asset in the ground when it can stand to benefit everyone” – clearly outlines what’s on the agenda and minds of Canada’s leaders and their extremely vocal fossil fuel barons: money. If Smith gave this same business pitch to the people who have had to evacuate from the apocalypse in our North, I’m sure they would completely understand how those 165 billion barrels of oil would “benefit” them too.
The amount of recoverable oil that Smith demands be extracted from the bowels of the Earth would be the equivalent of roughly 70,000, 000,000 metric tonnes of CO2e, an absolutely eye-watering amount of greenhouse gases spewed. For reference this would be the equivalent of emitting five times all of China’s emissions for the year of 2023. Beyond being wildly irresponsible, allowing this level of emissions would be wildly hypocritical given the finger-pointing towards China’s high emission profile by defenders of the oil and gas industry such as Smith, Moe, and numerous Canadian fossil fuel magnates.
photo by author
Critics would be quick to point at carbon capture and sequestration as an option to mitigate these emissions, especially since the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers has begged and pleaded for government subsidies to begin working on the technology on top of the billions already received. However, even if the technology is implemented at every oil extraction site in Canada and somehow captures 100% of emissions (something yet to be accomplished at any site anywhere in the world and still facing significant challenges to do so), the figure above for emissions comes from the point of combustion, not extraction. If Smith and the fossil fuel industry yearn for this level of extraction we can only expect that they anticipate a market that will fully realize its return on investment. Meaning this oil will be consumed and its emission will heat our planet further and catapult us into uninhabitability.
However, not to fret – the “projects of national significance” have recently been outlined as having the following criteria:
- “Strengthen Canada’s autonomy, resilience and security
- Provide national economic or other benefits.
- Have a high likelihood of being successful.
- Advance the interests of Indigenous Peoples.
- Contribute to Canada’s objectives with respect to climate change”
They are identified as “highways, railways, ports, airports, pipelines, critical minerals, mines, nuclear facilities, and electrical transmission projects.” Many folks may see pragmatism and realism – we must create large projects to advance our economy quickly and become an “energy superpower.” However, this warps the reality of the situation.
Such slippery language distracts from the real necessity – reducing emissions as fast as possible, developing renewable energy and the grid and storage infrastructure it needs, and using our rapidly diminishing carbon budget wisely to do so.
Between our global climate crisis and the projects being advocated, we see bizarre conflicting priorities. That gap is very inviting to a myriad of actors who are easily able to market their projects as fitting the criteria, even if they do nothing to stop emissions or address climate change directly. We can envision advocates for carbon capture jumping in to justify Smith’s “165 billion barrels” by arguing that their extraction is contributing to “Canada’s objectives with respect to climate change.” Or natural gas advocates using the nowdecades-old argument that their fossil fuel is “cleaner” and can be the bridge fuel to address fuel emissions, even though such a time has clearly passed.9,10,11
Such slippery language distracts from the real necessity – reducing emissions as fast as possible, developing renewable energy and the grid and storage infrastructure it needs, and using our rapidly diminishing carbon budget wisely to do so. Better to not mention the problem and culprits directly, especially when they and their financial power are sitting at the table with you.
The projects that “advance the interests of Indigenous Peoples” sends signals explicitly to entities and Nations that desire fossil fuel expansion, while pushing Indigenous communities, often to their own detriment, into a cornered position where they must put a price on what is reaped from the Earth. First Nations in BC and Ontario have strongly voiced their opposition to fast-tracked development legislation without proper consultation.
The federal government seems bent on pushing a divide-and-conquer approach that echoes the positions of Ontario Premier Doug Ford. Those Indigenous Nations that want the benefits of Canada’s push for energy development will play ball and get a cut of the pie. Those that don’t, such as the Wet’suwet’en or the Cree at Beaver Creek, will be bludgeoned into submission or dragged through the courts for years.
A Politics of Empowerment
That same Sunday, I was part of a group of organizers and activists who led a last-minute rally in Saskatoon to demand power lines not pipelines, to build renewables, to create the green jobs we need, and to have our Indigenous brothers and sisters be key consulted and consenting Partners. We coloured the sidewalks with chalk where the meeting was to take place, postered the downtown core with our messages, and converged at the Vimy Memorial.
photo by author
We had speakers from all walks of life: a young individual who reawakened the Fridays for Future in our province, a former fossil-fuel worker turned labour and environmental advocate, a lawyer who is taking the Province of Saskatchewan to court over their expansion of gas-fired electricity and our Charter Rights, an Indigenous professor and advocate for food sovereignty, and a longstanding environmental scientist and activist.
Marching from the memorial to the Bessborough Hotel where the meeting participants stayed, we raised our voices and made clear the future we need. Fortunately the smoke didn’t choke us out, but the outcomes and decisions made by the participants in the First Ministers meeting will only create more forest fires and climate disasters and will lead to further devastation – unless a clear and planned path is chosen.
That path is evident and the Partners are too – we know what needs to be done. However, if there is no courage, no conviction to do what is needed, we will drive ourselves further into crisis. If the fossil fuel industry is allowed to extort and manipulate our nation, if we as Indigenous people are punished for protecting the land, water, and air we all need, and if the rampant inequality in our society persists with money and profit being the sole drivers of our society, we are doomed to fail our own and future generations.
J. Arregui is an Indigenous Climate Organizer located on Treaty 6 Territory and the Homeland of the Métis.
Footnotes:
- A statement so vague that it implicitly lends itself to the imagination of reactionaries who argue that in fact it is in Indigenous People themselves who are setting the fires – a logic twisted in racism that aligns perfectly with the denial of the sciences of climate change and of historic Indigenous fire management.
- https://www.wri.org/insights/global-trends-forest-fires
- https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230612-did-climate-change-cause-canadas-wildfires
- https://climateinstitute.ca/news/fact-sheet-wildfires/
- https://climatefactchecks.org/worlds-richest-10-linked-to-two-thirds-of-global-warming-since-1990/
- https://www.ctvnews.ca/climate-and-environment/article/worlds-richest-10-caused-two-thirds-of-global-warming-study/
- https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/billionaires-emit-more-carbon-pollution-90-minutes-average-person-does-lifetime
- https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-environ-012220-011104
- https://www.theenergymix.com/u-s-oil-execs-pushed-gas-while-aware-of-climate-risks-documents-show/
- https://www.theenergymix.com/global-gas-expansion-endangers-climate-targets-renewables-transition/
- https://jpt.spe.org/twa/debunking-the-debate-is-natural-gas-really-a-bridge-fuel
