A tailings pond at a mine facility as seen from a helicopter tour of the oil sands near Fort McMurray, Alta.JEFF McINTOSH/The Canadian Press
It was a long road here for Fort McKay.
The Alberta First Nation sits amid oil sands development, and weighed in three years ago as a federal panel considered the state of regional environmental monitoring. At stake were the river and lands many in Fort McKay rely on, and the monitoring was found in 2010 to be inadequate. That set in motion a series of reviews and panels aimed at boosting environmental oversight.
In February of 2012, Ottawa and Alberta announced a Joint Oil Sands Monitoring (JOSM) program, but it's been a slow process since. After months of talks, Fort McKay sent proposed terms of reference to the province over a month ago. When they didn't hear back, that was it – Fort McKay pulled out of JOSM this month. Daniel Stuckless, the First Nation's manager of environment and regulatory issues, tells The Globe what got them to this point.
What was the breaking point?
It was a series of things. We had been participating in the development pre-JOSM, when it was the design of the world-class monitoring program that was supposed to be developed when the first series of reports first came out.... And the recommendations by that [federal] panel were actually pretty good. So, fast-forward to JOSM and the announcement of the joint Alberta-Canada plan, we had been participating with our First Nations colleagues. Then, through the development of the process, we were trying to nail down the specifics on how we would engage with both levels of government through this monitoring program – and what the program would be, and what it wouldn't be... so as information became available, we had more understanding of what would it be, and how it would be, so anyway, we finalized our thoughts on who we'd like to participate and at what level, and there was silence.
Since when?
I think it was early September. August or September.
What is your sense of the program as it stands?
It depends on what aspects you're looking at. One of the things the program has improved is the scientific aspect, the scientific robustness of the program itself. That certainly, in my mind anyway, has been improved. But there are other aspects that have lacked clarity.
Like the governance side?
Certainly, the governance piece, which is the key part for us. It was our expectation certainly in all of our engagement that we felt that there would be some recognition for communities most affected or directly affected, or communities of concern of some sort.
Why take the step of stepping away? Why not stay at the table?
Well, we've been trying to engage Alberta, and our input hasn't been accepted to date. We've got no indication that it will be accepted. And we've just felt that the [First Nations' negotiations] sub-table, the level of decision-making provided at that table just isn't very effective for the First Nations that participate.
Would you call it a token level of engagement?
I wouldn't say that. I would say that is just hasn't been effective. When you try to generate ideas for either acceptability or whatnot, you want a response to it. Is it a good idea, or a bad idea? Is it something we can do, or something we can't do? We were never able to make decisions. We were never able to get the details we needed in order to come up with solutions. So just the whole process itself wasn't effective.
You left the door open to returning to talks. What would that take?
Well, we'd like obviously a response to our terms of reference. That would be a start.
Are you going to accept the province's offer of a meeting?
Oh, absolutely. We'll continue to meet. But we'd like to understand what the purpose of the meeting would be. Who is going to be there? How are decisions going to be made? What are they looking for from us, what are we looking for from them? Do they understand our points? What can and can't we do? All that is a factor.
Do you have faith this program will effectively address monitoring in the end, or do you have doubts right now?
Too early to say. We're hopeful. When we first kicked off and participated in development of a world-class system, my hopes and I think our hopes as a collective were quite high. But we're still waiting to see on how that program lines up or how it continues to line up with what the original recommendations of the panels were.
This interviewed has been edited and condensed.
Josh Wingrove is a parliamentary reporter in Ottawa.