Honourable senators, I rise to speak in support of Motion No. 17, which was moved by the Honourable Senator McCallum.

This motion requests that the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources be authorized to examine the report on the cumulative impacts of resource extraction and development and their effects on environmental, economic and social considerations.

As Senator McCallum highlighted in her speech on October 27, we heard a great deal from representatives of the resource extraction industry when we studied Bill C-69 in the last Parliament, but very little from populations affected by the projects.

We heard about the positive contributions to Canada’s GDP from the resource extraction industry, but very little about the downsides. We heard big claims that projects benefit Canadians because of tax revenues and jobs without taking a more critical look at what kinds of jobs, who gets the jobs and what jobs are displaced.

Looking at cumulative impacts of resource extraction across the multiple environmental, economic and social consideration requires looking into their distribution geographically, socially, economically and across generations. Who benefits? Who suffers? With the exception of gender-based analysis, which made its way into impact assessment law through Bill C-69 — not without controversy — these distributional issues need real attention in Canada.

I would like to highlight some of these gaps in knowledge when it comes to distribution of benefits and losses for eventual committee work, but also as we reflect broadly on the efficiency and fairness of resource extraction in this country and our work as senators.

I simply cannot forget the courageous and moving testimony of Connie Greyeyes, a member of Alberta Bigstone Cree First Nation and former medic who worked on drilling rigs for a number of years in and around northern eastern B.C. She herself is a survivor of sexual abuse, only to have her case dismissed by the police. She and other First Nations witnesses shared extremely serious accounts of violence and abuse associated with energy development projects. Their testimony echoed two disturbing reports from Amnesty International, which detailed how transient work pays well, but these high wages raise the costs of living in local communities, put pressure on local health services, and cause disequilibrium in the social fabric, negatively affecting First Nations women and children. The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls similarly highlighted the link between resource extraction and spikes in violence against Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people.

My office tried to find out whether there is a broader correlation between resource extraction sites and geographic places where violence against Indigenous women across the country occurs. So far, the answer eludes us since police services throughout the country tend to avoid filling out the forms reporting on the race or ethnicity of victims of crime or accused persons for “operational reasons,” therefore precluding Statistics Canada from collecting and publishing accurate data on the identity of victims when they don’t outright dismiss their claims.

As explained in a previous speech, environmental racism is the burden imposed on racialized communities by disproportionately locating hazardous and toxic industries, such as hazardous waste sites, landfills and incinerators, in their neighbourhoods. The concept of environmental justice emerged in the United States in the 1980s when predominantly Black neighbourhoods started voicing concerns around toxic infrastructure projects surrounding their communities. Their efforts led to an environmental justice movement created within the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Unlike many other countries, Canada does not have a legislated environment justice lens, and, therefore, the issue remains mostly invisible and unaddressed beyond the pioneering work of researchers like Ingrid Waldron of Dalhousie University on the devastating impacts of pollution on Indigenous and Black communities in Nova Scotia. We have regional evidence in Sarnia, Grassy Narrows and others but no global picture for our country.

If we try to look locally at the distribution of benefits and detriments, we have one rare case study that is well documented and highlights the need to focus on distributive justice. I’m talking about the controversial Site C project. We have First Nations treaty issues. We have a project that is economically unviable. We have impacts on agricultural land and environmental pollution. The project also presents geotechnical risks at a serious scale.

The Site C dam is the largest publicly funded infrastructure project in British Columbia’s history, slated to flood 128 km of the Peace River and its tributaries, destroying Indigenous burial sites, traditional hunting and fishing grounds and dozens of cultural and spiritual sites. The Joint Review Panel’s report found the project will have more significant adverse environmental effects than any other project ever assessed during the 25-year history of environmental assessment in this whole country. Yet, the project was approved.

Four of the eight affected nations have signed Impact and Benefit Agreements with BC Hydro, but the terms of those agreements are kept confidential at the proponents request. One such offer to the West Moberly First Nations, which was refused, was made public in the context of their court case for treaty rights infringement. They were offered $3.5 million up front with annual payments of $350,000 for 70 years, indexed for inflation, for a grand total of $28 million before inflation.

According to The Narwhal, these are similar rates proposed to nations around the Coastal GasLink project. Little money seems to be the rate for extinguishing Indigenous rights in the context of multi-billion-dollar megaprojects.

Again, it is impossible to get a full picture because Impact and Benefit Agreements are not made public, but most importantly First Nations are negotiating blind and competing against each other while the government and proponents see all the options, creating a deeply iniquitous situation that goes beyond financial consideration.

According to CBC News, another leaked agreement included

. . . a condition that the band will “take all reasonable actions” to dissuade its members from doing anything that could “impede, hinder, frustrate, delay, stop or interfere with the project, the project’s contractors, any authorizations or any approval process.”

That includes dissuading band members from taking part “in any media or social media campaign.”

Colleagues, this is a severe curtailment of civil rights.

An independent report shows that the alternative project options had much smaller ecological and social impacts and created more jobs. In comparison, Site C provided the “least jobs per dollar spent.” And that was before the project incurred another $3 billion in construction cost overrun. Site C is considered a big mess.

This brings me to my last point about distributional effects and our role as senators — the temporal or intergenerational dimension. It is likely future generations who will be left with massive environmental liabilities, orphaned wells, landscapes devastated by climate-induced droughts, pests, extreme weather events and all the long-term detriments of our short-sighted extractive actions. There are currently 3,400 orphaned wells and another 94,000 inactive wells in the province of Alberta alone, totalling an estimated liability cost of $30.1 billion, and countered with only $227 million security. This impacts the health of farmers and the people living around the wells.

I believe it is one of our core duties as senators to look into this from its very origin. The Senate has had the constitutional mandate to protect the interests of regions and minorities. The Supreme Court has said our Constitution is “a living tree” — an appropriate ecological metaphor — and that is it meant to evolve contextually. Over time, the scope of minorities deserving representation and protection in this chamber has consistently expanded.

The obvious elements who do not get to vote for the decision taken by parliaments and governments, even when it is a question of life or death for these stakeholders, are nature and future generations. Our children and their children can’t vote today for their future. By the time they get to vote, their votes may have become meaningless if our actions and willful blindness to the impacts of our decisions on the air, land and waters have already laid waste to our life-sustaining systems.

Colleagues, taking our role of protecting minorities seriously means trying to become custodians for future generations and furthering ecological and intergenerational justice. Indigenous peoples, nature and future generations, all deserve better choices than a rock and a hard place.

As for Mrs. Greyeyes, she now volunteers with the Fort St. John Women’s Resource Society, she started the Women Warriors support group for families of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and she is one of the founders of the Fort St. John Sisters in Spirit vigil. She embodies an important lesson for all of us that we can heal from these terrible situations and become active agents for collective well-being if we can muster the courage to face them head on.

We can and must do better. For all these reasons, I support the motion of Senator McCallum. I hope our institution will address these fundamental issues for the betterment of our country and society.

Thank you. Meegwetch.