Citing occurrences of human harms, as public finance poised to deepen
Vancouver / Kitimat / Hazelton | December 11, 2025 — Hundreds of health professionals are sounding the alarm—for the third time in as many months—that Canada has never undertaken an independent health impact assessment of LNG infrastructure, as British Columbia and Canada forge ahead with plans to massively scale up the LNG industry.
The three interventions, starting with the most recent, are:
- Today, the Canadian Association of Nurses for the Environment (CANE), the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), and groups on the frontlines of LNG development, including the Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition, sent a formal request for intervention to one of LNG Canada’s major funders, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC). It says the Japanese public financial institution and export credit agency has failed to uphold its own lending policies under international agreements relating to health, business and human rights commitments. It calls on the bank’s governor general to halt further public financing of LNG Canada and associated gas infrastructure until an independent, cumulative health impact assessment is completed.
- On November 26, the Health Officers’ Council of BC voted in support of “an independent, comprehensive health impacts assessment of the B.C. gas industry that includes cumulative impacts from fracking to export and combustion (scope 3) emissions and is adequately resourced and informed by Indigenous contexts.” The HOC includes medical health officers at B.C’s regional health authorities, physicians at the BC Centre for Disease Control, physicians practicing and public health physicians in the province.
- In September, more than 175 healthcare providers and First Nations members sent an open letter calling directly on the B.C. government to prove that LNG is safe before approving more projects, citing a growing body of peer-reviewed health research that indicates it is not.
Currently, four LNG infrastructure projects—all in British Columbia—have been referred to Ottawa’s major projects office, seeking ‘national interest’ designations. If secured, these designations would facilitate pathways to construction through expediency legislation—driving up the risk of health harms without adequate assessment or protections—and unlock new federal public financing established in Budget 2025.
Physicians and nurses practising in northern British Columbia, who are among the signatories in today’s complaint to the Japanese government, warn that significant human health impacts are already occurring across the LNG supply chain in the province. They report rising concerns about more patients struggling with asthma, heart problems and other illnesses linked to polluted air.
They also raise concerns around Indigenous rights, including a lack of Free, Prior and Informed Consent from affected rights-holders. The healthcare providers further point to LNG’s role in escalating climate health impacts. They say they are attending to more heat-related illness during extreme heat events and longer wildfire seasons, as well as attending to growing anxiety and stress in communities facing repeated evacuations, smoke days and flooding.
Quotes
Ankur Patel, Registered Nurse, in Kitimat, BC:
“As a healthcare practitioner treating patients in Kitimat, Canada’s first frontline LNG export community, it’s clear to me that people living near pipeline corridors and export facilities are already facing elevated health risks. Before any additional financing flows, the full cumulative burden on respiratory, cardiac, and community health must be independently assessed and publicly released.”
Dr. Tim Takaro, physician-scientist and professor emeritus, Simon Fraser University:
“Fast-tracking LNG build-out is outpacing safeguards designed to protect Canadians’ health. Institutions that are using public dollars to bolster the polluting largely foreign-owned LNG industry in Canada—and this includes the provincial and federal governments, as well as foreign lenders, like Japan—seem unwilling to address how much this emissions- and energy-intensive industry is going to cost Canadians’ health and the already overburdened public healthcare system.”
Shannon McPhail, Co-executive Director, Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition:
“Here in the north, people are living with the combined impacts of fracking, pipelines, industrial shipping, wildfire smoke, and flooding. Japanese financiers cannot keep pretending LNG Canada is just a plant on the coast. The real question is what this entire project means for the air, water, and lands that sustain all life in these communities.”
Dr. Ulrike Meyer, family physician in Dawson Creek, BC:
“We need to be questioning the use of public finance to worsen health and human-rights risks, particularly for people who live with the daily impacts of LNG infrastructure and export facilities in British Columbia. Decisions about large fossil fuel projects must consider, reflect and assess the real conditions that people, patients and communities are living in. LNG is a brand new industry in Canada and our inexperience regulating it is, unfortunately, very evident.”
Note to editors: British Columbia is the epicentre of LNG development and expansion in Canada with LNG Canada, which started commercial operations in July of this year and is expected to ramp up to export 14 million tonnes per annum of LNG; and the nearby Cedar LNG project is under construction, as is Woodfibre LNG in Squamish. LNG projects already referred to Ottawa’s Major Projects Office include: the doubling of LNG Canada, the American-owned Ksi Lisims LNG project, and the associated the 900km Prince Rupert Gas Transmission line that would cross the territories of 21 First Nations, as well as the North Coast Transmission Line that would enable using clean energy to power LNG export facilities in northern BC. Additionally, the Tilbury LNG expansion project in Delta continues in British Columbia’s regulatory process.
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Resources
- Link to JBIC letter | Signatories are calling on the bank to (a) suspend all new financing for LNG Canada and related infrastructure, (b) require a fully independent, cumulative health impacts assessment led by qualified public-health experts, and (c) condition any future financing on verified Free, Prior, Informed, Consent and implementation of health protections.
- Health Officers’ Council of BC | Resolution: Cumulative Health Impacts Assessment for the BC Gas Industry.
- CAPE and First Nations health protectors have called directly to the Province of B.C. this year to fund a comprehensive, cumulative and independent health impact assessment of LNG and fracking activities.
- Faces of Impact: JBIC and Japan’s LNG Financing Harms Communities and the Planet | Friends of the Earth Japan, October 2024.
About CAPE
The Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) is a physician-directed non-profit organization working to secure human health by protecting the planet. Since its founding in 1994, CAPE’s work has achieved substantial policy victories in collaboration with many partners in the environmental and health movements. From coast to coast to coast, the organization operates throughout the country with regional committees active in most provinces and all territories.
About CANE
The Canadian Association of Nurses for the Environment (CANE) is a national non-profit dedicated to integrating planetary health into nursing practice. With a mission to promote planetary health among Canadian nurses, we work to develop and enhance evidence-informed nursing practice, unify a nursing voice advocating for planetary health, and commit to intersectionality in our work.
About Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition
The Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition was founded in 2004 by a diverse group of people living and working in the Skeena River watershed. Our board of directors and membership reflects the broad interests of the people in this region. We are united in understanding that short term industrial development plans, even 50-year plans, will not benefit our region in the long run if they undermine the social and environmental fabric that holds the watershed and its communities together. SWCC has twice earned the recognition of top ten most innovative and effective organizations in Canada as well as the North American Conservation Leadership Award. The PRGT pipeline would travel through the Skeena Watershed.
For more information + media interviews, contact:
Allison Murray, Communications Consultant
allison@MurrayCommunications.org
604-442-1844