On November 21, 2024, CAPE was invited by Canada’s Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources to provide a statement and ask questions as part of its study on “Climate Change: Canadian Oil and Gas Industry.” We were asked to speak to several points, including: 

• The industry’s relevance to our country and economy.
• The industry’s record in reducing its carbon footprint: expected further improvements, competitiveness and efficiency, and alignment with Canada’s climate goals.
• The transition plan to a more sustainable future, particularly with regards to the industry’s workers.
• The industry’s strategic positioning to better respond to risk and world trends.
• Within this scope, how the industry is competing against international competitors who have different taxation and subsidy levels.

Dakota Norris, CAPE’s fossil fuel extraction campaign manager, provided a statement coming from his experience leading the Place Based Power Project, which aims to address the health, environmental and justice impacts of fracking and oil sands tailings ponds alongside impacted Indigenous communities; and as a member of the Gwich’in Nation with strong ties to community and Indigenous-led climate action. That statement, as well as Dakota’s responses to follow-up questions, is presented below. CAPE President Dr. Melissa Lem provided a written statement to the committee, which is also shared below. 

Call to Action

By reflecting on our statements, physicians and others can help influence narratives tying climate change to oil and gas in their own lives and work to shape bold policy which enables a just, healthy and sustainable future for all. If you have any questions or comments on this statement, please reach out to dakota@cape.ca 

Access to the hearing, including a transcript and video, can be found here. 

Dakota’s Opening Statement

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

I am Dakota Norris, member of the Gwich’in nation, and fossil fuel extraction campaign manager at the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (or CAPE), where I unite Indigenous and physician voices.

I acknowledge this committee’s work, including on Bill S-5 upholding the right to a healthy environment. Strong Canadian policy, not industry goodwill, must guide our collective future. 

Deh’cho Grand Chief Herb Norwegian said, “Climate change is a government and science term; there is a much bigger issue here: global evolution.” Climate change reflects dominance systems—of humanity over nature, industry over the public, and money over health. Nations like the Katlodeeche know this, as they’ve faced famine, floods, and wildfires in a few short years exacerbated by systemic inequalities. Canada cannot reconcile climate change without Indigenous reconciliation.

Human health is at the mercy of fossil fuels through impacts like extreme weather and reduced food security. This is Canada’s greatest public health challenge, and therefore CAPE prescribes a moratorium on oil and gas development to prevent further harm.

To address the study themes:

On industry’s relevance

Oil and gas has been important to our economy. Yet, as fossil fuel demand declines, we continue subsidizing the industry, socializing its risks while externalizing environmental and health costs onto Canadians. We must reject industry projects as inevitable. Communities lead the energy transition and could absorb triple the funding for Indigenous clean energy, which strengthens resilience and reconciliation. Why underfund projects that benefit the public while subsidizing an industry that harms them? As Wet’suwet’en Hereditary Chief Namoks said, this country is better than we think it is, and we’re worth more than a dollar. 

On industry’s record

Despite promises, emissions continue to rise. Industry erodes trust in its commitments through underreporting emissions, greenwashing, and co-opting Indigenous goals.

Industry-led incremental, technological solutions fail to align with Canada’s climate goals. For instance, subsidizing electric vehicles benefits private companies while still requiring mining for vehicle proliferation. Public transportation, by contrast, benefits the collective and reduces emissions.

On sustainable futures

Oil and gas job decisions are hard for communities, but they are a fraction of Canada’s workforce and largest source of emissions, harmful to health, and were never sustainable to begin with—extractive projects often end in one lifetime. 

Sustainable futures must prioritize generations over jobs. Economic reconciliation has been pushed to mean providing some jobs and equity in these destructive projects. Clean energy offers real reconciliation and more jobs for Canada’s youngest and fastest growing demographic. 

On risks and trends

Industry positions itself to maintain dominance while facing declining demand, ad bans, Indigenous rights, and new policies. Unfortunately they mobilize their resources to mislead the public, challenge policymakers, and put Indigenous communities under duress. The industry’s vulnerability underscores the need to diversify Canada’s economy.

On competition

Industry seeks to remain profitable in part by producing more plastics. We can’t bank on false solutions that cause as much or worse harm than our current system. Dene National Chief George Mackenzie shared a message to industry: “We try our best to take only what we need, share what we have, and not take all that is available to us”. Corporate profit maximization drives unsustainable exploitation. Therefore, Canada needs strong policies to establish sustainable competitive positions in the energy transition, including the right for communities to say no to industry and yes to their own futures.

All people in Canada, including future generations, have rights, and we have a responsibility to uphold them. How can we stop denying the climate crisis? Indigenous knowledge is climate action. What would it mean if we stopped looking at the land as a natural resource to extract, sell, and consume, but rather as our home? As the intergenerational wealth we are stewarding for our children, and their children, rather than a short term job opportunity? How can we recognize that planetary health is human health, that the land is healing for us and sustainable in itself? 

Dakota’s Responses From the Question Period

Response to Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne on whether Canada should continue to fund carbon capture: 

From a health perspective, every opportunity has costs, and we have yet to account for all of the costs of emissions as well as CCUS. While we don’t yet know all of the health costs, we do know: they’re bad, as well as the costs on the environment. And who’s bearing the brunt of these costs? And I’ll say, it’s mostly going to be Indigenous communities. So we can’t forget that they are going to be sacrificed for any further investments in CCUS, as well as any failures to reduce emissions. I would just like to remind this committee that Canada is developing an environmental justice strategy. So that needs to be considered alongside the right to a healthy environment. We need to consider this broader health, environment and justice context when we’re looking at these decisions.

Response to Senator Jane Mary McCallum on the extent to which the oil and gas sector can meet its emissions reduction targets without reducing oil and gas production, such as electrifying their fleets:

I think this is another great example of a way that industry is subsidized, because electric vehicles and automation do require significant water inputs. They require critical minerals, which are mostly mined on Indigenous territories. We don’t know what all the health impacts of this is. The road networks that these vehicles rely on also rely on bitumen products. So although industry may be in a sense increasing its efficiency, the harms that are not accounted for are still staying the same or increasing. So if we talk about subsidies, we must also consider the externalities and the health impacts they may be having. I don’t think anything other than reducing emissions directly is a solution. In fact, those would be false solutions, because they distract from what’s truly required, and they direct funding and other resources into new revenue streams that benefit industry rather than the public and reducing emissions.

Response to Senator Paul J. Massicote on how to create a win-win situation with oil and gas companies: 

I just want to mention the Fort Chipewyan residents downstream of the oil sands who are facing increased cancer rates probably don’t feel like winners. Someone like my daughter who was just born and will be inheriting a world driven by the climate crisis probably won’t feel like much of a winner. There’s a lot of people who are already not winning and who will probably continue to not win in this scenario. So I think we need to move from a traditional interest-based negotiation between two parties that would look at how two people share a slice of a pie so they all win, to rights-based negotiations, which instead prioritizes the legal and moral entitlements that people have. So it’s not always just about win-win, it’s about how do we prioritize the rights and responsibilities that we have, and how do we not forget that there will be losers and there are currently people who are not benefiting at all or are being actively harmed in many ways by this situation as it stands.

Dr. Melissa Lem’s Written Statement to ENEV committee on “Climate Change: Canadian Oil and Gas Industry”

I am a family physician who lives and works on the unceded and traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, in what is currently known as Vancouver. Rural medicine is also an important part of my career. I have worked in over 25 different communities across BC, the Northwest Territories and Northern Ontario, and continue to maintain close relationships in many of them. This has given me first-hand experience caring for patients in local economies dependent on resource extraction, and in witnessing the health and healthcare system impacts of the fossil fuel industry within and beyond these communities. 

Over the past two to three centuries, the fossil fuel industry has made important contributions to increasing our global standard of living. But today, as our economy, security, health and healthcare systems experience increasing local and broader harms from the oil and gas industry and climate change, it is no longer justifiable to expand and subsidize it.

I would like to describe what I have seen in my home province of British Columbia. A comprehensive scoping review published this year of epidemiological studies on hydraulic fracturing or fracking, the process by which the vast majority of “natural” gas is extracted in BC, links it to a broad range of health harms, from birth defects and asthma to heart disease, childhood leukemia and death. This research is playing out in real health outcomes in these communities. In the past few years at least seven doctors in the town of Dawson Creek in the Peace Region of BC, where fracking is rampant, have closed their practices and moved away from the region, privately identifying the health and community impacts of the LNG industry as their primary reasons for leaving, including diagnoses of rare tumours and deadly cancers in their patients, colleagues, friends and family members, including oil and gas workers. In a town that typically employs 15-20 family physicians, this represents almost half of the workforce. Northern Health saw the highest number of ER closures this summer, severely impacting access to care.

Furthermore, if we fail to lower our emissions—which is still the case in Canada’s oil and gas sector—the Canadian Climate Institute estimates that climate change will cost the Canadian healthcare system an additional $110 billion per year within the next 25 years. Air pollution from fossil fuel combustion already causes 1 in 7 premature deaths in Canada. A healthcare system already in crisis cannot afford this.

The World Health Organization calls climate change the greatest threat to global health of the twenty-first century. By extension, failing to reduce our carbon pollution, and expanding oil and gas extraction, are also our greatest threats to global health. To protect the health of oil and gas workers, the communities where they live and beyond, we must plan a rapid, managed transition to a clean energy economy, while closely monitoring and responding to the industry’s health impacts locally and nationally. Our patients deserve nothing less. Thank you.