Indigenous leaders say a third-party review of the Alberta Energy Regulator’s response to a protracted tailings pond leak and chemical spill at an Imperial Oil Ltd. IMO-T oil sands project does not go nearly far enough in addressing problems that led to the incidents and kept people in the region largely uninformed about them.
The report, conducted by the accounting firm Deloitte, said the AER’s staff adhered to the regulator’s policies and procedures in response to the spills, were candid during interviews, and appeared committed to the goals of environmental protection. It placed the blame on the policies and procedures themselves, saying many are not in line with current standards and the expectations of external stakeholders, including First Nations.
The AER’s board ordered the review after a pair of incidents, during which the regulator came under fire for a perceived lack of transparency when it came to keeping the public informed about the pollution. Water tainted with dangerous levels of arsenic, dissolved metals and hydrocarbons seeped from Imperial’s Kearl project, north of Fort McMurray, Alta., beginning in May, 2022. The leak occurred near a small fish-bearing lake and tributaries to the Firebag and Muskeg rivers.
The federal government, Indigenous communities in the region and the public at large were not informed of the leak until months afterwards, when a separate incident at Kearl spilled 5.3 million litres of waste water. First Nations have been especially critical of the response.
Chief Allan Adam of Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation said he does not accept the findings and recommendations in the report. He repeated an earlier demand that the AER be disbanded, and that Ottawa take control of regulating the oil sands, arguing that the system itself is flawed.
“The Alberta Energy Regulator just washed their hands and said, ‘We did nothing wrong.’ And I can assure you right now that the Alberta government and the regulator better prepare for court because that’s our next step,” Mr. Adam said in an interview.
The Mikisew Cree First Nation, which relies on Alberta’s Athabasca watershed, said it, too, has lost confidence in AER’s ability to regulate operations in the oil sands. Its officials wrote to AER chief executive officer Laurie Pushor in July demanding that Kearl production be shut down until “seepage and exceedances stop,” but were refused, it said.
“This is not a ‘comms’ issue,” Mikisew Cree Chief Billy-Joe Tuccaro said in a statement. “That’s insulting to those of us who have to drink the water. But then the AER won’t take any responsibility for the actual impacts of the seepage and spill, casting all blame on Imperial. The seepage and spill are symptoms of a broken regulator.”
The report acknowledged that Indigenous people interviewed expressed deep concerns that the information they received as the incidents occurred was inadequate.
“All respondents expressed significant concern with the gap in communications around the event, especially in the context of one e-mail to a single point of contact to the communities in May, 2022, with no additional follow-up until the [environmental protection order] was issued in February, 2023,” it said. “For nine months a developing event with off-site impacts was being managed and no additional communications were formally provided to regional Indigenous and First Nations communities.”
The report recommends the AER develop more thorough protocols for informing people inside and outside the organization during incidents, and that it assign roles for keeping communities informed. The regulator should also establish systems to verify that Indigenous communities are receiving information, it said.
In response, the AER board wrote that it directed the regulator’s management to prepare an action plan to deal with the highlighted deficiencies, and asked Deloitte to assess the outcome of that in the coming months.
Officials with the regulator were not immediately available for comment.
Jeffrey Jones