Less than a week after its members were announced, an Alberta oil sands panel has lost one of them over strict confidentiality rules she felt would prevent her from involving other groups, including aboriginals, in the panel’s work.
American water policy expert Helen Ingram submitted her resignation to Alberta Environment on Tuesday, five days after Environment Minister Rob Renner announced the composition of the panel. It’s the latest blow as the province continues to pledge it will strengthen monitoring of the oil sands.
Dr. Ingram was concerned there were “so few scientists” on the panel; that Alberta officials ignored her schedule and set the first meeting at a time she couldn’t attend or phone in; and about a rule that all communication about the panel’s work be cleared by Mr. Renner’s office.
She resigned “due to an accumulation of concerns that have made me increasingly uncomfortable,” according to her letter.
The panel is intended to overhaul the province’s patchwork oil sands environmental monitoring program, but already has many critics.
It is co-chaired by Hal Kvisle, the former CEO of pipeline giant TransCanada Corp., and includes David Pryce, an executive of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, and Bruce Carson, a former Harper government adviser. Environmental groups question the presence of the oil industry on the board, though Mr. Renner insists its input is needed in a new monitoring regime.
Mr. Renner’s office is now looking to replace Dr. Ingram, whose departure also leaves the mostly academic panel without a woman.
“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.
To quell questions about a lack of aboriginal participation, Mr. Renner pledged the panel would sit down with all stakeholder groups. But Dr. Ingram said the rules around confidentiality would have prevented her from doing so.
“I was concerned about my ability to reach out to aboriginal people in trying to design a monitoring system that would be useful to them and address their concerns,” Dr. Ingram said in an e-mail.
Mr. Kvisle said he didn't expect Dr. Ingram's decision, but thinks the panel is right to maintain a “reasonable degree of confidentiality” in its discussions. He also dismissed claims that, as a former pipeline executive, he's an improper fit on the panel, which is scheduled to hold its first meeting next week. “I would hope they'd pay more attention to the fact I'm a lifelong Albertan and a committed environmentalist,” Mr. Kvisle said. “I’ll be doing my best and I’ll be doing that from the perspective of a concerned Albertan.”
Dr. Ingram’s resignation came one day after the release of a report that is highly critical of the province’s maligned Regional Aquatics Monitoring Program (RAMP), an industry-funded and led water-monitoring body. The report followed one from a federal panel that found “significant shortcomings” in oil sands monitoring, and a study from the Royal Society of Canada that found regulations haven’t “kept pace” with oil sands development.
Authors of Monday’s scathing RAMP review said monitoring efforts are sufficiently shoddy that serious impacts could be going undetected. There are too few monitoring stations and little baseline data, but “clearly we suspect that there are contaminants in the system,” said Monique Dubé, a University of Saskatchewan researcher who was among the RAMP report’s authors.
Meanwhile, Alberta continues to approve oil sands projects, including one last week.
Dr. Dubé believes RAMP’s budget needs to be doubled and its organization overhauled. “The oil sands are one of the dominant industries for our economy, but … we don’t have the information that’s needed,” she said.
Improving RAMP is tied directly to Mr. Renner’s panel, in that baseline data is needed to set up an appropriate monitoring program, said Liberal MLA and environment critic Laurie Blakeman. “I’m still wondering how these guys are supposed to set up a monitoring system when we don’t have any baseline data for these areas at all.”
With a report from Nathan VanderKlippe in Calgary
Editor's note: An earlier online version of this article, including its headline, was missing important clarifications. This version has been corrected.
