Fracking BC: Report from the People Webinar Series

The glasswaters foundation is running this series of free webinars where activists, experts, and voices-on-the-ground describe the impacts of the fracking industry in B.C. The webinars are executed by the Watershed Sentinel Educational Foundation, with the expertise gained from the release of All Fracked Up! The costs of LNG to British Columbia.

In this series of webinars, panelists will discuss the current fracking industry in BC – subsidies, impacts on the water, land, and human health, and much more – which will have to be exponentially ramped up if BC continues its pursuit of an LNG export industry.

Fracking BC: Report from the People #1

The first webinar in the series was held on Wednesday, November 25, 2020, and included speakers Maude Barlow, Eoin Finn, and Peter McCartney (speaker bios listed below). Content from this webinar includes a PowerPoint presentation and video recording:

• PowerPoint Presentation – Fracking BC: Report from the People #1
• Video – Fracking BC: Report from the People #1

Fracking BC: Report from the People #2

The second webinar in the series was held on Monday, December 7, 2020, and included speakers Mitchell Beer, Dr. Melissa Lem, and Dr. Romain Chesnaux (speaker bios listed below). Content from this webinar includes PowerPoint presentations, reports, and video recording:

Reports:

• A portrait of wellbore leakage in northeastern British Columbia, Canada
• Water footprint of hydraulic fracturing in Northeastern British Columbia, Canada
• Assessing the potential of cross-contamination from oil and gas hydraulic fracturing: A case study in northeastern British Columbia, Canada
• Fractures in the Bridge: Unconventional (Fracked) Natural Gas, Climate Change and Human Health

PowerPoint Presentations & Video:

• PowerPoint Presentation – Mitchell Beer
• PowerPoint Presentation – Dr. Romain Chesnaux
• Video – Fracking BC: Report from the People #2

Fracking BC: Report from the People #3

Co-sponsored by Council of Canadians Pacific Working Group on LNG

The third webinar in this series, Site C, LNG, and Me, was held on Wednesday, February 24, 2021, and included speakers Delee Nikal, Ken Boon, Mike Sawyer, and Chief Roland Willson (speaker bios listed below). Content from this webinar includes a PowerPoint presentation, fact sheet, and video recording:

• Powerpoint Presentation – Chief Roland Willson
• Fact sheet of petitions on the issues
• Video – Fracking BC: Report from the People #3 (Due to Watershed Sentinel operator error, this video starts partway through Chief Willson’s presentation.)

Fracking BC: Report from the People #4

The fourth webinar in this series, Friday’s Food for Thought on Fracking, was held on Friday, October 22, 2021, and included speakers Dr. Warren Bell, Peter McCartney, Alexandra Woodsworth, and Dorene Bernard (speaker bios listed below).

• Video – Fracking BC: Report from the People #4

Webinar Speakers:

• Maude Barlow | Activist; author; board chair, Food and Water Watch

Maude is a longtime activist and policy critic with a special interest in water issues, former chairperson of the Council of Canadians, and recipient of fourteen honorary doctorates as well as many awards. She has authored and co-authored 19 books, including her latest, Boiling Point: Government Neglect, Corporate Abuse, and Canada’s Water Crisis and Whose Water is it Anyway? Taking water protection into public hands. She is a contributing author to All Fracked Up! The Costs of LNG to BC; her chapter focusses on the impacts of fracking on water in Northeast BC.

• Eoin Finn | Co-founder and board chair of My Sea to Sky; extreme energy researcher

Eoin is a management consultant with 25 years of business experience, and is now a retired partner of major accounting/consulting firm KPMG. Eoin holds a B.Sc. in chemistry, a Ph.D. in physical chemistry and an MBA in International Business. Eoin has spent the past five years researching aspects of BC’s proposed LNG industry, and is a contributing author to All Fracked Up! The Costs of LNG to BC; his chapter focusses on the economics of BC LNG.

• Peter McCartney | Environmental journalist; climate campaigner with the Wilderness Committee

Peter works from the unceded Coast Salish Territories, mobilizing communities against destructive fossil fuel export projects and build political will for a just transition to a zero carbon economy. He has just returned from a trip to BC’s northeast and will share his observations.

• Mitchell Beer | Sustainable energy and climate specialist; Journalist; founder, The Energy Mix

A former member of Canada’s Parliamentary Press Gallery, Beer began his career as a staff reporter with the weekly Canadian Native News Service, then spent 3½ years as a reporter and editor with Canadian Renewable Energy News, a monthly specialist journal. Mitchell is the founder of The Energy Mix, a Canadian non-profit that promotes community awareness of and action on climate change, and a contributing author to All Fracked Up! The Costs of LNG to BC; his chapter focusses on the economics of BC LNG.

• Dr. Melissa Lem | Family physician, writer

Dr. Melissa Lem is a Vancouver family physician who also works in rural and remote communities across Canada. A board member of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, and Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia,

A board member of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, and Clinical Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia, she has participated in policy and advocacy work around fracking, wildfires, climate change, clean energy and the health benefits of time spent in nature. Her writings on the environment and human well-being have also been published by national media and non-profit organizations. She is a contributing author to All Fracked Up! The Costs of LNG to BC; her chapter focusses on potential health impacts of fracking showing up in Northern BC.

• Dr. Romain Chesnaux | Professor in environmental engineering (specializing in water resources), at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC)

Dr. Chesnaux’s recent research in northeastern BC has focused on methane leakage from fracked wells, as well as regulations on mandatory reporting, continued monitoring, and the use of protective measures.

• Delee Nikal | Wet’suwet’en Gidimt’en Clan

Delee Nikal is a member of Witset Nation, a community belonging to the Wet’suwet’en band of five nations in northern British Columbia. Delee’s activism includes using her gift of speaking for missing and murdered Aboriginal women, and protecting traditional hunting and fishing practices. She was the first woman elected to a national position in her local union and the only woman in a workplace that builds and maintains timber-trestle rail bridges.

• Ken Boon | Peace Valley Landowner Association

Ken Boon lives at Bear Flat on the Peace River with wife Arlene on her grandfather’s old farm. Ken is president of the Peace Valley Landowner Association who have challenged the Site C project in court. Among many other actions, Ken and Arlene took part in the protest camp at Rocky Mountain Fort during the winter of 2015 and 16, and were both named in the lawsuit that followed by BC Hydro. Despite being expropriated by BC Hydro, they are still permitted to remain in their old house for now.

• Mike Sawyer | Citizen’s Oil & Gas Council

Micheal Sawyer has a master degree in environmental science and 25 years of professional environmental consulting and advocacy experience, much of it relating to the Canadian upstream oil and gas industry and more specifically, large diameter transmission pipelines. Mr. Sawyer has worked on large industry projects for companies like Esso, Shell, Petro-Canada and has also worked for landowners, First Nations and ENGOs who found themselves in conflict with oil and gas. He has participated in over 30 regulatory hearings.

• Chief Roland Willson | West Moberly First Nation

Roland Willson was first elected as Chief of the West Moberly First Nations in August 2000, and has continued to serve in that position for the past 20 years. Chief Willson sits on several boards and councils, including the BC First Nations Energy and Mining Council, the BC First Nations Gaming Committee, the Pacific Trails Pipeline First Nations Limited Partnership and the Northeast Aboriginal Business and Wellness Centre. Chief Willson is a prolific presenter. In recent years, he has made numerous presentations at various forums and seminars concerning issues important to First Nations, including the duty to consult, aboriginal land and resource management, and the impacts of the oil and gas and shale gas industries on First Nations in northeastern BC. In the past five years, the Chief has presented at forums and seminars held by the Canadian Institute, Insight Information, the University of Waterloo, the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, the BC Land Summit, the University of Alberta Faculty of Native Studies, the Alberta Society of Professional Biologists, the federal Department of Justice (Ottawa), the Planning Institute of BC, and the University of British Columbia’s Natural Resources and Environmental Studies Colloquium. He has also appeared twice before the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples, once with respect to the federal Specific Claims policy and once on the topic of aboriginal economic development. Chief Willson is an active enthusiast of Land and Treaty preservation.

• Dr. Warren Bell | Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment

Born and raised in Vancouver, B.C., Dr. Warren Bell has been a family physician for 45 years. He is past founding president of Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment. In recent years he has worked with CAPE in BC to direct public attention to the harms of fracking/LNG with respect to the climate crisis and human health.

• Alexandra Woodsworth | Dogwood Initiative

Born and raised on the west coast, Alexandra moved to London to do a PhD in social movement studies in the mid 2000s, and spent ten years helping to build the UK’s grassroots climate action movement. She played a leading role in successful campaigns to stop airport expansion, block a new generation of coal-fired power stations and reduce public transit fares. Returning to B.C. with her kids in 2012, Alexandra joined the fight to defend west coast communities and the climate from the fossil fuel industry’s plans to turn the region into a global carbon export hub. She now leads Dogwood’s climate campaigns, currently focused on ending fossil fuel subsidies, stopping Trans Mountain and moving B.C. Beyond Gas.

• Peter McCartney | Wilderness Committee

Peter McCartney is the Climate Campaigner at the Wilderness Committee, where he works with communities to oppose fossil fuel extraction projects and support a just transition to a post-carbon world. Peter has been working on fracking and liquefied natural gas issues for six years, and has made many trips to the Peace Region to connect with locals and document gas development.

• Dorene Bernard | Mi’kmaki Grassroots Grandmother, Water Protector, and Land Defender

Dorene Bernard, is a Mi’kmaq grandmother of 9, mother of 4, and Mi’kmaki Grassroots Grandmother, water protector, land defender, water walker and cultural teacher. She draws her strength and courage from the Indigenous women in her life; Survivors of Residential School, Elders, teachers, leaders, movers and shakers who inspired her to work in social work, social justice, with Survivors of Residential School, on Mi’kmaq Treaty Rights, resisting Environmental Racism and awareness of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives, and the protection of the Water and climate justice. She was the Coady Chair on Social Justice at Coady International Institute in 2017, at St. Francis Xavier University in NS, focusing on educating in Indigenous perspectives on many of the issues she has worked on over the years. She worked in collaboration with Tripartite Forum to commemorate the Canadian National Historic Site and Mi’kmaq Heritage Site of the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School, on September 30, 2021.