Strategic Investigation of the Jackpine Mine Expansion Dispute in the Alberta Oil Sands

© IGI Global. Xiao, Y., Hipel, K. W., & Fang, L. (2015). Strategic Investigation of the Jackpine Mine Expansion Dispute in the Alberta Oil Sands. International Journal of Decision Support System Technology, 7(1), 50–62. https://doi.org/10.4018/ijdsst.2015010104The Graph Model for Conflict Resolution (GMCR) methodology is employed to ascertain strategic insights into a serious conflict over environmental concerns connected to the expanded exploitation of oil sands at the Jackpine Mine Expansion project located in Alberta, Canada. In fact, the expansion of extracting bitumen from large tracts of oil sands in Alberta and its associated potential negative environmental impacts have received increasing attention at the global level. Accordingly, environmentally responsible extended mining of bitumen at the Jackpine site is urgently needed. Hence, the GMCR methodology and its associated decision support system GMCR II are utilized to systematically investigate the conflict of the Jackpine Mine Expansion project. The results imply that the Federal Government of Canada is more concerned about the economic benefits generated by the oil sands projects rather than environmental impacts. It is suggested that more effort should be devoted to the environment conservation by the government.Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of CanadaNational Natural Science Foundation of China [71471087

The Duty to Consult and Environmental Assessments: A Study of Mining Cases from across Canada

In 2004, two pivotal court cases, Haida First Nation v. British Columbia (Minister of Forests) and Taku River Tlingit First Nation v. British Columbia (Project Assessment Director), were heard by the Supreme Court of Canada. These two cases were fundamental in establishing the duty to consult and accommodate Aboriginals, whereby the Crown, as represented by Canadian government agencies, must consult with and potentially accommodate Aboriginal interests when their rights may be infringed upon. This need for government consultation with Aboriginals raises important questions about the role of environmental assessments (EAs), where government agencies must assess the impacts of proposed projects and consult with members of the public, including Aboriginals. This thesis examines the relationship between the duty to consult and the EA process, and how well the duty to consult may be met through EAs. The potentially complementary role of impact and benefit agreements (IBAs) is also examined where possible. To accomplish this, the literature surrounding the duty to consult, EAs, and IBAs was analyzed to determine the best practices for each of these elements. From these best practices, a framework for analysis was developed and applied to a selection of 22 mining projects from various jurisdictions across Canada where EAs had been conducted. The cases were then analyzed to determine how well they conformed to the best practices established in the literature review. The results indicate that the territorial EAs have conformed better to the best practices for both the duty to consult and EAs than most other EA regimes in Canada, particularly the federal EA process. As well the results suggest that greater attention to direct socio-economic impacts and legacy effects of non-renewable resource extraction projects would allow for not only a healthier environment, but also better accommodation of Aboriginal interests and concerns

Petro-Power and Progressive Permutations: Conservation Offsets, Oil Sands, and the Politics of Neoliberal Conservation

Recent years have witnessed a growing international discourse and related rise of conservation paradigms that suggest the only way to make conservation work is to fully incorporate it into economic circuits. The development of a suite of market friendly conservation techniques have been at the forefront of this neoliberal turn in conservation practice, leading to the need for a deeper theorization and understanding of the role that non-extractive uses of nature are playing in relation to contemporary capitalism, and the political implications of these new approaches to conservation. The dissertation explores this global phenomenon through a case study of terrestrial conservation offsets in response to the ecological consequences of oil sands development in Alberta, Canada. The chapters that follow query the social, political and economic processes leading to the development of this particular conservation tool, and the political implications of project implementation in the province, particularly in regard to shifting accesses to land and resources. The findings complicate a number of dominant narratives to be found in the existing literature on market-based conservation practices, particularly in regard to the privatization of governance and their ability to facilitate recursive rounds of enclosure and accumulation. The case study draws attention to a series of contradictions and hybridizations that suggest that market-oriented conservation tools are associated with a more fractured and partial political project than often presented in the critical literature. The implications of the study suggest a need to shift focus from concerns about the use of market-friendly instruments in and of themselves, to the broader social and political context in which any given market is embedded. Doing so may serve to strip the neoliberal project of its assumed power, and open opportunities for novel and unanticipated re-imaginings of human-environment relations

NO MAN'S LAND: deconstructing the company camp in Canada's Oil Sands

For nearly fifty years, commercial development in the Canadian Oil Sands has been the generator of a population explosion in northern Alberta. Oil sector workers seeking stable employment and high wages have been drawn to the region for decades; often with the intention of re-settling permanently (or semi-permanently) in local communities near industrial activities. These population increases have long been the driver of urban (and sub-urban) development in Fort McMurray; which has grown to become a fully functioning industrial town of nearly 100 thousand permanent residents. While many consider Fort McMurray a paragon of the contemporary ‘single industry’ (or company) town, an exclusive academic focus on ‘city-building’ has failed to acknowledge the increasing relevance of the company work camp in accommodating perpetual population increases. Indeed, statistical and demographic data – gathered by the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo – has revealed a trend prioritizing the deployment of company camps in lieu of permanent improvements to the existing urban construct. Overwhelmingly, the camp has been characterized as the natural consequence of industrial expansion: as resource extraction operations advance farther into the Canadian hinterland, the centripetal urban model (i.e. Fort McMurray) is rendered increasingly obsolete. The expanding industrial footprint has necessitated an alternate (extra)urban project. This assumption - that the camp is inevitable - has severely limited the ongoing public discourse surrounding contemporary working accommodations, and has contributed to a perception of the camp as ‘benign’ or ‘passive’ when – in fact – the opposite is true. This thesis aims to assess the current scope and scale of camp deployment through a careful accounting of individual accommodations sites while simultaneously exploring the organizational prerogatives of camp deployment. The camp – as extra-urban paradigm – is linked to an explicit economic agenda which has successfully institutionalized a ‘nomadic,’ ‘transient,’ or otherwise ‘precarious’ working regime on what is arguably Canada’s most significant industrial project

Mining and Communities in Northern Canada

For indigenous communities throughout the globe, mining has been a historical forerunner of colonialism, introducing new, and often disruptive, settlement patterns and economic arrangements. Although indigenous communities may benefit from and adapt to the wage labour and training opportunities provided by new mining operations, they are also often left to navigate the complicated process of remediating the long-term ecological changes associated with industrial mining. In this regard, the mining often inscribes colonialism as a broad set of physical and ecological changes to indigenous lands. Mining and Communities in Northern Canada examines historical and contemporary social, economic, and environmental impacts of mining on Aboriginal communities in northern Canada. Combining oral history research with intensive archival study, this work juxtaposes the perspectives of government and industry with the perspectives of local communities. The oral history and ethnographic material provides an extremely significant record of local Aboriginal perspectives on histories of mining and development in their regions. With contributions by: Patricia Boulter Jean-Sébastien Boutet Emilie Cameron Sarah Gordon Heather Green Jane Hammond Joella Hogan Arn Keeling Tyler Levitan Hereward Longley Scott Midgley Kevin O'Reilly Andrea Procter John Sandlos Alexandra Winto

Alberta Oil and the Decline of Democracy in Canada

Prior to May 2015, the oil-rich jurisdiction of Alberta had, for over four decades, been a one-party state. During that time, the rule of the Progressive Conservatives essentially went unchallenged, with critiques of government policy falling on deaf ears and Alberta ranking behind other provinces in voter turnout. Given the province’s economic reliance on oil revenues, a symbiotic relationship also developed between government and the oil industry. Cross-national studies have detected a correlation between oil-dependent economies and authoritarian rule, a pattern particularly evident in Africa and the Middle East. Alberta Oil and the Decline of Democracy in Canada sets out to test the “oil inhibits democracy” hypothesis in the context of an industrialized nation in the Global North. In probing the impact of Alberta’s powerful oil lobby on the health of democracy in the province, contributors to the volume engage with an ongoing discussion of the erosion of political liberalism in the West. In addition to examining energy policy and issues of government accountability in Alberta, they explore the ramifications of oil dependence in areas such as Aboriginal rights, environmental policy, labour law, women’s equity, urban social policy, and the arts. If, as they argue, reliance on oil has weakened democratic structures in Alberta, then what of Canada as whole, where the short-term priorities of the oil industry continue to shape federal policy? In Alberta, the New Democratic Party is in a position to reverse the democratic deficit that is presently fuelling political and economic inequality. The findings in this book suggest that, to revitalize democracy, provincial and federal leaders alike must find the courage to curb the influence of the oil industry on governance

Tar sands or scar sands: the oil sands are a huge benefit to the Canadian economy but is this at the expense of the environment that is left behind for future generations?

Crude oil is an essential resource for the world. About 40% of the world’s total supply of energy, and 95% of the energy used in the transportation industry comes from oil and with global consumption of oil increasing to record highs, and conventional sources of oil dwindling, this makes unconventional sources of oil like the tar sands seem more economically appealing. Canada’s tar sands are in an advantageous and unique position. As the biggest deposit of unconventional oil and gas in the world and sitting in a politically stable source country, there is vast international interest in these reserves. But nevertheless extracting oil from tar sands requires more energy than conventional drilling, meaning more greenhouse gases are emitted before the oil reaches the end user. This in turn creates a host of environmental consequences for the surrounding areas and globally and health and human rights concerns for First Nations. Producing approximately 96 million barrels per day, and with global oil demand continuing to grow, these reserves are being increasingly exploited. Mechanisms must therefore be in place to ensure sustainable use of these controversial reserves and thought should be given to the needs of current and future generations, as well as preserving the natural environment which may be affected as a result of tar sand production

Exploring factors that constrain and enable sustainable transboundary water governance in the Mackenzie River Basin

Governance of transboundary water systems is complicated by factors such as institutional fragmentation, social and environmental change, competing values for and uses of water and power dynamics. These challenges exist in both international and federal transboundary contexts, although much of the scholarly attention has been on international transboundary watersheds. Sustainable transboundary water governance is an important goal given the fact that freshwater ecosystems are among the most rapidly degrading in the world. Governance, the ways in which decisions are made and implemented, can have a critical role to enable sustainability in transboundary watersheds. Many analyses of transboundary water systems provide only partial accounts of transboundary water governance because they focus primarily on the roles of governments and interjurisdictional institutions. Furthermore, analyses of federal transboundary water systems have not satisfactorily considered the role of power dynamics as possible constraints on transboundary water governance. Appreciation of the full complexity of transboundary water governance, and factors that constrain and enable sustainable transboundary water governance, requires considering governance processes at multiple levels and the variety of actors that may be involved therein. A power-analysis can facilitate consideration of which interests are advantaged in various governance processes that have implications for sustainable transboundary water governance. The purpose of this study is to explore factors that constrain and enable sustainable transboundary water governance in a federal transboundary water system. Explicitly assessing multi-level governance processes, and the ways in which power dynamics impact them, facilitates a consideration of their roles and contribution to transboundary water governance. This study’s purpose is achieved via the following objectives: 1) identify the jurisdictional levels at which federal transboundary water governance takes place in the Mackenzie River Basin, (MRB), Canada; 2) consider the design and performance of an interjurisdictional river basin organization (RBO) in the MRB; 3) determine the ways in which power dynamics impact a) collaboration and b) water use decisions within jurisdictions in the MRB; and 4) assess the role and contribution of a) an RBO, b) collaboration and c) water use decisions within jurisdictions to transboundary water governance within the MRB. Single and multiple case studies and qualitative data collection and analysis methods were used to achieve these objectives. Two hundred and ninety-six documents, 30 interviews and personal observations were collected and analyzed to achieve the study objectives. The MRB, a jurisdictionally and ecologically complex federal transboundary system in which three provinces, three territories, a federal government and Indigenous governments have responsibilities for water, provided an excellent empirical context in which to explore these issues. Upstream hydroelectric developments and oil sands mining have emerged as key transboundary concerns in this basin. The multiple perspectives, values, interests and power dynamics among key actors in the basin challenge governance that contributes to sustainability. Furthermore, as a basin that at 1.8 million km2 that drains approximately 20% of Canada’s land mass, a multi-level governance design is essential to achieving coordination and inclusion required to enable sustainable transboundary water governance. In fact, a number of multi-level governance initiatives, including an interjurisdictional water management institution, collaborations at various levels and major water use decisions, exist within and among jurisdictions in the basin. They are included as case studies in this dissertation. By considering multi-level governance processes and the ways in which power dynamics impact federal transboundary water systems, this study makes two major contributions to the transboundary water governance literature. First, it demonstrates the need to consider large transboundary water systems as systems of multi-level governance. Considering the ways in which governance processes at multiple levels interact may be key to identifying factors that constrain and enable sustainable transboundary water governance. Second, by undertaking a power analysis of a federal transboundary water context this study directly challenges assumptions in the literature that the presence of a central government or well-developed regulations within federal jurisdictions can temper federal water conflicts. This study’s assessment of the design and performance of an interjurisdictional institution, the ways in which power dynamics impact collaboration and water use decisions and consideration of the roles and contributions of multi-level governance processes in a federal transboundary water governance context provide empirical contributions to the transboundary water governance literature. The assessment of how power impacts collaboration in transboundary contexts adds a theoretical and empirical contribution to the collaborative governance literature

Telling the Stories, Branding the Land: Examining Regional Narratives and Texts in Northern Alberta

This ecocritical study analyzes literary works and narratives related to northern Alberta. It establishes correlations between the way the land, history, and culture have been represented in these buried texts and the master narrative of resource development that continues to dominate this highly contested region. Using an interdisciplinary approach to this understudied content, this investigation combines rhetorical and discourse analysis with ecocritical close readings. The dissertation initially explores recurring themes in northern Alberta’s literature and then examines specific narratives concerning three men who have remained popular in the region: A.M. Bezanson, “Twelve Foot” Davis, and “Peace River Jim” Cornwall. While their legacies have endured, the thesis addresses the fact that other important texts that were written by women – such as Mary Lawrence, Katherine Hughes, Dorothy Dahlgren, and Alvena Strasbourg – have become scarce and obscure. After comparing the gendered perspectives contained in these texts, the discussion turns to authors who have been affiliated with fossil fuel development, including petroleum pioneer Sidney Ells, investigative trailblazer Larry Pratt, and industry ally J. Joseph Fitzgerald, who each helped rhetorically define, confront, or embrace local infrastructure projects. Next there is an analysis of three novels that engage with stock genres in order to present their stories, including a northern Alberta-based thriller written in 1980 by best-selling author Alistair MacLean. The thesis concludes by examining two influential local newspaper editors who, through their popular books, became self-appointed gatekeepers of the region’s voices. This example of authorial control over northern Alberta’s published texts speaks to an urgent need to recover, reproduce, and republicize neglected local stories and texts in order to challenge broader hegemonic forces and to better understand this region and its people. This dissertation intervenes to offer a critical starting point in recognizing, reading, and disseminating these vital voices now and in the future

Environment in the Courtroom

Canadian environmental law is a dynamic and exciting area that is playing an increasingly important role in furthering sustainable development policy. Environmental law has distinctive relevant principles, operating procedures, implications, and importance in comparison with other areas of law, and these distinctions must be appreciated both within the legal community and by all those who are concerned with the way that courts handle environmental cases. Environment in the Courtroom provides extensive insight into Canadian environmental law. Covering key environmental concepts and the unique nature of environmental damage, environmental prosecutions, sentencing and environmental offences, evidentiary issues in environmental processes and hearings, issues associated with site inspections, investigations, and enforcement, and more, this collection has the potential to make make a significant difference at the level of understanding and practice. Containing perspective and insight from experienced and prominence Canadian legal practitioners and scholars, Environment in the Courtroom addresses the Canadian provinces and territories and provides context by comparison to the United States and Australia. No other collection covers these topics so comprehensively. This is an essential reference for all those interested in Canadian environmental law