Looking into the mouth of Premier David Alward’s Trojan Horse— Responsible Environmental Management of Shale Gas in New Brunswick, Canada

Prepared by Jean Louis Deveau, PhD, Honorary Research Associate, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, New Brunswick

I’m not suggesting that we call an election over this, but some government has to have the mandate from an election. You can’t come in a year after the election and say we’re going in this direction. This is the biggest, perhaps the biggest decision that New Brunswickers have ever had to face…It’ll last for, it could last forever. And no one has assured me, scientists, technologists or anybody else that they can protect our water in a way that I’d say go ahead and do it. If you want it, take it to the electorate, let the people vote in the next election, say you’re going to do it and if you get into power and the people in New Brunswick say you can go ahead with it, go ahead with it. But for now, stop. (Citizen Engagement Tour, Durham Bridge, 11 June 2012)

There is a disjuncture between Dr. Stephen Hart’s comments, above, and what Premier David Alward has been saying. Ever since he became Premier after the September 2010 provincial elections, David Alward has consistently argued that he was mandated to pursue the development of natural gas from shale in New Brunswick one of the four Atlantic provinces in eastern Canada. For instance, when Kirk MacDonald, one of his caucus members, raised the issue of a shale gas referendum, as requested by his constituents 11 months after the last election, Premier Alward said,

New Brunswickers have made that decision through the election, through the platform… During the campaign, we ran on a platform that included the responsible development of shale gas (Berry, S. p. A3).

But as clearly stated in the seven words used in their party plank below, Mr. Alward campaigned not on the development of shale gas, but on the development of natural gas.

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A new Progressive Conservative government led by David Alward will: support the responsible expansion of the natural gas sector (my emphasis)…(Putting New Brunswick First, 2010)

While shale gas is a form of natural gas, it is more often referred to in the oil and gas industry as unconventional natural gas, partly because it is trapped and unable to move within the shale where it was formed millions of years ago, but also because of a process called “hydraulic fracturing” designed to extract it from that rock deep beneath the Earth’s surface (Howarth, Ingraeffea, and Engelder, 2011). There are fundamental differences in the environmental consequences of the ways in which conventional and unconventional natural gas are extracted.

Hydraulic fracturing or fracking is the process used to extract unconventional natural gas. It involves pumping water down a borehole under enough pressure so as to fracture the rock in which the gas is imprisoned. The water is mixed with chemicals and a proppant (sand). Chemicals are used to facilitate boring, reduce friction, and shorten drilling time. Sand is added to the mixture to keep the fractures open after the wellbore pressure has been released. The fractures provide a passageway for the gas to come up the well (National Energy Board, 2009). Colborn, Kwiatkowski, Schultz, and Bachran (2011) found that more than 75% of 353 chemicals known to be used in fracking were a danger to public health.

The conventional way of extracting natural gas is by drilling into an impermeable rock seal overtop a reservoir into which the gas has amassed after having moved through permeable rock layers beneath. In Alberta, these pockets encompass an area averaging 5.3 square kilometers (National Energy Board, 2009). New Brunswick has a long history of conventional natural gas exploration and extraction. In 1908, J.A.L Henderson, a company from London, England made the first natural gas discovery in Stoney Creek Field, just 15 kilometers south of Moncton. In 1912, Henderson built a pipeline and for 80 years sold its natural gas to buyers in Moncton and Hillsborough. Other discoveries of conventional natural gas were made in 1985 and 1998. There has never been opposition to the expansion of this type of natural gas extraction in New Brunswick nor would there have been if Premier Alward had focussed his efforts on the expansion of

2 conventional natural gas, something that most people would argue has significantly less environmental impact than fracking. What has become problematic is the Alward government’s pursuit of unconventional natural gas, henceforth referred to as shale gas. I am part of a community-based coalition consisting of anti-shale gas activists who are determined to stop shale gas development in our province.

The goals of this manuscript are threefold. First, I will explicate how, from its seven-word platform plank, members of the Alward government bypassed public consultation on whether the people of New Brunswick and Aboriginal Peoples wanted the shale gas industry, and instead methodologically developed a 106-page discussion paper called Responsible Environmental Management of Oil and Gas Activities in New Brunswick: Recommendations for Public Discussion (New Brunswick Natural Gas Group, 2012). More specifically, I will describe the ingredients used by the Alward government in its recipe for creating this concept called responsible environmental management, used first in the title of the discussion paper, released in May 2012, and then again in February 2013 as the title of the discussion paper’s reincarnation, the Rules for Industry (New Brunswick Natural Gas Group, 2013). The former were recommendations for rules needed to regulate the shale gas industry, which after being somewhat modified, became those rules. An example of being responsible means not drinking and driving. This word’s assignment to a non-human entity, like environmental management, warrants some type of definition. It is the making of that definition which will be the primary focus of the first part of my manuscript. In other words, responsible environmental management is an ideological concept, and as such is rooted somewhere, somehow, and by someone. That being so, ideology as introduced here, then, refers not to the concept itself, but to its method of creation (Smith, 1990, p.45), which I plan on unpacking. Second, I will demonstrate how it happened that through the coalition’s work of attending and providing feedback to the government on its discussion paper, via nine public consultation meetings between June-July of 2012, some of our interventions were added to the recipe whereas others were not. Third, I will demonstrate how, unbeknownst to New Brunswickers, one of the primary ingredients—public health—used in the government’s recipe for making this ideology was quietly dropped without the public’s awareness.

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The making of anti-shale gas activists and responsible environmental management

In June 2010, I attended a meeting at a fire station in Elgin, organized by Stephanie Merrill from the Conservation Council of New Brunswick. This was to hear American activists Kate Sinding and Wes Gillingham talk about their experiences with shale gas mining in the United States. Kate and Wes impressed upon me the serious threat that hydraulic fracturing posed to our groundwater. Following this meeting, Stephanie toured the province giving presentations on shale gas and showing the movie Gasland (2010) Her presentation included, amongst other things, the names of nine companies that had been granted exploration leases in the province. Yet, it seems most New Brunskwickers were completely unaware that negotiations had been taking place between government and this industry. The four most active companies were Corridor Resources, Windsor Energy, Petroworth, and SWN Resources Canada.

In October 2010, Corn Hill residents were summoned, not by their elected officials, but by Corridor Resources to a community meeting which I attended. Local residents had received their invitation through a pamphlet in the mail. Corn Hill was the birthplace, a month later, on November 16th, of a non-governmental organization called Citizens for Responsible Resource Development (CRRD). I became their elected secretary. Our mission was to raise awareness about shale gas development. In early July 2011, myself and others appeared on radio and television to discredit CRRD after our chairperson unilaterally announced her support for the responsible development of shale gas at a joint press conference with the Minister of Natural Resources. Following an emergency meeting in Sussex later that month, we planned our first of five marches/rallies to the Legislative Assembly denouncing the government’s plans to pursue shale gas mining.

In June 2011, the Alward government organized a forum on shale gas at the Fredericton Inn, in Fredericton. Participation was by invitation only. So, about 60 anti-shale activists including myself paraded on the sidewalk in front of the hotel with our “No Shale Gas” signs. Later that day, representatives from approximately 20 community organizations met to establish the first major anti-shale gas coalition under the umbrella of the New Brunswick Environmental Network (NBEN). I was

4 elected its first chairperson. This coalition consisted of Aboriginal Peoples, Acadians, and Anglophones.

In December 2011, the government issued a press release outlining 12 guiding principles from which it would build its world-class regulations to ensure that the province would be ready in the event of an upsurge in this industry, as has occurred in Pennsylvania. I have listed these principles in the order that they appeared in the discussion paper that was subsequently released for public input.

1) Addressing potential impacts of geophysical (seismic) activities 2) Taking steps to prevent potential contaminants from escaping the well bore 3) Verifying geological containment outside the well bore 4) Managing wastes and taking steps to prevent potential contaminants from escaping the well pad 5) Monitoring to protect water quality 6) Addressing the need for sustainable water use 7) Addressing air emissions 8) Protecting public health and safety 9) Protecting communities and the environment 10) Reducing financial risks and protecting landowner rights 11) Sharing information, and 12) Maintaining an effective regulatory framework.

This discussion paper, developed by a group of civil servants, who called themselves the Natural Gas Group (as opposed to the more accurate descriptor “Shale Gas Group”), contained 116 recommendations. These are divided unevenly amongst the 12 principles listed in the first column of Table 1 below.

In May 2012, the government issued another press release announcing this time all nine locations where it would be soliciting feedback from the public on its discussion paper. This was the first and only time that our coalition had an opportunity to debate this issue with government officials in a public forum, which the government called “a Citizen Engagement Tour.” The government officials sitting at the panel were Craig Parks, Department of Energy and Mines, as well as David Whyte and Annie Daigle, Department of Environment. The moderator was

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Mark Belliveau, Communications Officer, Department of Natural Resources. The Chair was retired professor Dr. Louis LaPierre, later discredited after it was learned that he had falsified some of his academic credentials. To help us understand better how it was that certain of our interventions were (partially) captured by the Natural Gas Group whereas others were not, I will refer to the analogy of 12 onions used to make French onion soup. Each onion and its layers represent one of the discussion paper’s 12 sections and corresponding sub-sections.

Table 1 approx. here

Reading the discussion paper after it first became available, I was struck by its level of complexity, particularly section 2, which is about “preventing potential contaminants from escaping the well bore.” Part of the reason for this, as explained to us later by Parks, was that the discussion paper contained technical information on things like lining the gas well with a protective layer of steel casing, cementing the space between the steel casing and the surrounding ground, pressure testing the well bore, and so on. Even though the intent had been to solicit “constructive feedback on these recommendations from New Brunswickers,” as had previously been suggested by Natural Resources Minister Bruce Northrup in his press release, the degree of complexity in which these were written precluded this from happening.

The most damning accusation about the complexity of the language used in the discussion paper came from Maureen Burke (Citizen Engagement Tour, Norton, 4 July 2012). Quoting literacy statistics from the International Adult Literacy Skills Survey of 2003, she told the panel that more than half of New Brunswickers aged 16 and over “are not able to understand and act upon information found not only within the government of New Brunswick’s ‘Natural gas from shale’ website but also upon information found within the…discussion paper.”

Obviously that did not deter the members of the Natural Gas Group from completing their nine-stop tour in small-town New Brunswick. In fact, one of the most frequent complaints the panel received was about their choice of venues and how they had deliberately avoided the larger cities of Fredericton, Saint John, and

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Moncton. Julie Dingwall, a Saint John resident, voiced our displeasure on this issue with remarkable precision:

But I want to talk tonight about democracy and the democratic process and ask you to go back and ask the government why they felt it necessary to make sure that cities weren’t invited…We’re all New Brunswickers and we all should have a say in what’s going to happen to the future of our province because this is long term stuff. This isn’t stuff that you just say, ‘Oh, let’s do that today and we will see what happens.’ I want to talk about [the fact that] in making sure that cities weren’t heard, you in fact removed the bulk of the people from the province from having an opportunity to come to these. Many city dwellers by living in urban environments in fact don’t have cars and I defy you to get from Saint John to the Norton Region without a car (ibid.).

Whenever that point was raised, we were informed that the issue would be taken back to the government’s attention. In the end, the cities were never included in the tour. Nevertheless, our coalition had decided well beforehand that we would encourage our membership to car-pool and attend as many of the nine public meetings as possible, which we did. I personally attended the first meeting in Chipman, the last meeting in Norton, and the one in Durham Bridge.

All meetings were audio-recorded. I obtained a copy of the recordings for each meeting from the Natural Gas Group and had them transcribed, at my expense.

So for each of these public meetings, picture if you would, three members of the Natural Gas Group along with Dr. LaPierre sitting behind a table at one end of the hall. Following the moderator’s introductory remarks, either Parks or Daigle would provide an overview of the various stages involved in the development of this industry before leading into a dialog about the discussion paper itself. This is how Parks related the discussion paper to the concept of responsible environmental management:

So the discussion document as I’ve mentioned contains 116 recommendations and these are recommendations from the Natural Gas

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Group to government, for what we see to be the responsible environmental management (my emphasis) of oil and gas activities in New Brunswick (Citizen Engagement Tour, Bathurst, 21 June 2012).

With those words, and for the first time ever, I understood what responsible environmental management signified. In short, the concept of responsible environment management consisted of 116 recommendations and these recommendations as further explained by either Parks or Daigle came about as a result of the following activities:

With respect to the actual development of the document, last year, last summer, we held a New Brunswick natural gas forum - that was in June of last year. A lot of valuable information was garnered from the public and stakeholders in the province from that. As well as subject matter experts from across government departments have all waded in on this, numerous times. As well we did a cross-jurisdictional review of basically all the North American jurisdictions that had this type of activity going on. We wanted to see what their regulations and best practices were. As well as some 300 reports, critiques, and model standards that are coming out and are actually still continuing to come out as this industry has continued to grow (Citizen Engagement Tour, Bouctouche, 22 June 2012).

The important issue here is that instead of being able to witness for ourselves what responsible environmental management had meant prior to the 2010 election, so that we’d be in a position to either vote for or against the Progressive Conservative party’s energy policy on shale gas development, it wasn’t until 20 months after the election that we were made aware of what their seven-word platform plank meant. But by that time, they had already won a majority, which left us activists with no other option but to fight against this. This included such things as developing the elements of a counter campaign, forging alliances with other like-minded organizations like the New Brunswick division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, and getting hydro fracking experts like Cornell University professor Anthony Ingraeffea to come to New Brunswick. All of the aforementioned and more, which I’ve described elsewhere (Deveau, 2014), is bona fide work, and while a complete description of its magnitude is beyond the scope of this

8 manuscript, suffice it for me to say at this time that this has encompassed long drives in treacherous road conditions, myriad hours negotiating on the phone, and incalculable hours explaining to supportive, albeit uncommitted, friends and family why opposition to shale gas development is critical.

The next section provides three instances of how the feedback received by the Natural Gas Group was filtered to maintain the structural integrity of the discussion paper.

Fear of groundwater contamination

Groundwater contamination was by far one of the greatest concerns people expressed about this industry. In a brief produced for Physicians, Scientists, and Engineers for Healthy Energy, Tony Ingraeffea (2012) writes that 6-7% of new wells leak in their first year. Reporting similar statistics that he had discovered after reading both the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection website and a paper published by Brufatto et al. (2003) in Oilfield Review, Mark D’Arcy expressed concerns that these leaks would lead to the eventual contamination of our groundwater.

After quoting a different set of reports, and more specifically the work of Theresa Watson and Steven Bachu (2009) on more than 315,000 wells in Alberta, as well as a study done by Osborn et al. (2011) from Duke University, Parks responded that this high proportion of leaky wells were likely attributable to inadequate regulations and the fact that the Osborn study lacked appropriate baseline data. Although there was never any denial that gas wells leak, Parks was unmoved by these sorts of comments as suggested in his response to D’Arcy’s comments:

As you said, that’s not an acceptable situation and people are working hard to resolve it. So let’s not be blind about the past, but let’s look to the future in terms of how we can address these issues (Citizen Engagement Tour, Blackville, 25 June 2012).

In short, whenever one of us tried to undermine the legitimacy of the hydraulic fracturing process using a report gleaned from either the internet or from the

9 scientific literature proper, someone from the panel countered with a different study or, as demonstrated above, by suggesting that future technological breakthroughs would solve the problem. The issue here, of course, is that the people who sat on the panel, with the exception Dr. LaPierre, had been paid from our tax dollars not only to know where to find this literature, but also to read and to understand it. All of us, on the other hand, did not necessarily have easy access to the same type of scientific literature and had to figure this out on our own without receiving a dime.

One of the persons who came up to the microphone in Bouctouche did not have to quote any reports or scientific literature to make his point. Maxime Daigle was a “former oil and gas driller/casing installer,” with seven years of experience in shale gas mining. He zeroed in on Section 2.3 of the discussion paper, which referred to the ability of the casing to withstand “an internal pressure rating that is at least 20% greater than the anticipated maximum pressure to which the casing will be exposed during hydraulic fracturing and lifetime of the well.” After agreeing with the recommendations for Section 2.3, he asked why the same recommendations were not being applied to the joints between the casings. After one bores a hole into the ground and removes the drill bit, steel pipes are used to isolate the well from the surrounding ground and water sources. These steel pipes, known as well casing, come in sections with threads at both ends and are screwed together. This is the same principle you would use in joining a sequence of garden hoses together to water your garden except in this case, the casings stretch underground anywhere between 300 and 1200 meters (Frac Focus 2.0!). M. Daigle argues:

When you torqued the casing together, four, five, six thousand foot pounds of torque on each, at least half of them, they strip. You can’t correct that. (Citizen Engagement Tour, 22 June 2012, Bouctouche).

So here we have what appears to be an inherent flaw in the process brought to the panel members’ attention by someone with lived experiences in the field and who incidentally asked the panel if any of them had actually drilled wells,

So my question is…how do you guys know how to put regulations into place when…you don’t have anybody on that group that has ever drilled, cased,

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cemented, fracked a well, and you’re talking about all these recommendations, you’re putting all that together, and yes, you went into bits and pieces of everywhere around the world…and made yourself called experts…but you’ve never even worked in the oil and gas industry. Bullshit. (ibid.).

In short, recommendations for an industry that would impact the quality of every New Brunswicker’s life had been developed by people who had no experience in this type of work and who had relied mostly on book knowledge to complete this discussion paper.

The panel did not respond to these assertions, nor would one expect them to. Put bluntly, none of the 12 principles previously mentioned are about considering alternative methods of extracting shale gas from underground rocks, that is, of using something other than hydraulic fracturing.

The idea of looking at alternatives or of even discussing the merits of whether or not this industry should even be taking place in New Brunswick preyed on Heather Scott’s mind:

It just sounds like the government is planning to go ahead and you’re looking for our input on the regulations and most people don’t want to go ahead and I think we needed a process before this to ask us whether we wanted to do this or not (Citizen Engagement Tour, Norton, 4 July 2012).

On October 4, 2011, Premier Alward delivered a speech to the Moncton Rotary Club, Chamber of commerce, and Enterprise Greater Moncton, in which he said that his MLAs would be hosting town hall meetings in every riding to get our views on this industry (Oldmaison Weblog, 2011), however, this never happened.

Depreciating property values

The panel members never dismissed the fact that groundwater or surface contamination was a possibility. But this recognition of the shortcomings of the hydraulic fracturing process unravelled not in terms of waiting for a new and

11 improved method of extraction, as citizens often suggested, but fell within the realm of two sections of the discussion paper. Section 10.1 requires companies to post a $100,000 bond “to protect property owners from the financial impacts of industrial accidents, including the loss or contamination of drinking water.” Section 10.2 describes a water replacement protocol in the event that the oil and gas company is presumed responsible for adversely affecting the quality and capacity of a landowner’s water supply. So, when Margo, a fourth generation dairy farmer expressed concern about the level of compensation she would be entitled to receive in the event that either her land or that of her neighbour’s got polluted, Belliveau’s response was,

We had that exact same comment from another dairy farmer yesterday, in Havelock … and obviously part of the reporting here, is that not only do we have to look at houses, and single dwellings, but you’re bringing up a point that is also part of what we have to look at which is you can’t just look at homes, you have to look at what about the farm that’s here…what about…so your point is taken and duly noted by Dr. LaPierre, I’m sure, in his report (Citizen Engagement Tour, Hillsborough, 19 June 2012).

Belliveau’s comments should not be construed as a sign of empathy towards a fourth generation dairy farmer who could potentially lose her entire livelihood, but towards ensuring that their damage deposits, as stipulated in the discussion paper, were large enough to account not only for single-family dwellings but for farms as well. The revised damage deposit in Section 10.1 of the Rules for Industry was increased from $100,000 to $500,000.

Public health

This brings me to my final point, public health, something of great concern to many. In Hillsborough, Patricia Leger asked “what health studies have you based these recommendations on?” (Citizen Engagement Tour, Hillsborough, 19 June 2012). Garth Hood wanted to know if one of the members of the Natural Gas Group was a toxicologist (Citizen Engagement Tour, Blackville, 25 June 2012). Certainly one of the most compelling interventions was when Meghan Scammel spoke, not so much in terms of what she said but how A. Daigle responded to her.

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Scammel asked where in the discussion paper the public health section was found? This is how A. Daigle responded:

Sure, so [the] Department of Health and the Public Health section within that department, or whatever it is, is undertaking their own independent work on this. They have been in consultation with the Natural Gas Group, and we’ve been working with them, but at more of an arm’s length since the beginning. So they will be releasing something publicly later this year. It’s not in that document—no, that was on purpose to have it separate. It’s a benefit to them somewhat for us to be putting out what government’s recommendations are for regulation and what may or may not be permitted in the province should shale gas development proceed. So, they’ve been fully briefed and are aware of this document and there will be more forthcoming from them in the future (Citizen Engagement Tour, Durham Bridge, 11 June 2012).

This was another important clue that something had gone awry because the protection of public health had been one of the guiding principles in developing the regulations.

After grabbing the list containing the government’s initial 12 principles, and comparing them with those found in the discussion paper, as listed in the first column of Table 1, I noticed an anomaly in the eighth principle. Public health had been dropped. Principle number eight now reads as follows, “Addressing public safety and emergency planning.” Despite all of these principles having been announced publicly, there was never any subsequent announcement made by the government indicating that public health was no longer on the list. As Parks explains,

Section eight is aimed at planning for public safety and emergency response. The requirements in this section are for industry to have security plans and emergency response plans in place (Citizen Engagement Tour, Blackville, 25 June 2012).

A public health perspective would assess how this industry might be adding value to the lives and health of New Brunswickers (Province of New Brunswick, 2013).

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Referring back to my onion soup analogy, public safety is about ensuring that a first aid kit is available in the event that a bowl of boiling hot onion soup falls on your lap. Public health would determine a priori if onion soup is the best dish for New Brunswickers, or if a different menu item would be more suitable for the general health and well-being of our population. On April 30th, I asked Belliveau for an explanation and received the following email response on July 16 from his replacement, Veronique Taylor:

The 12 principles were essentially developed to guide the rules to be developed for the oil and gas industry. While the Rules for Industry that were released in 2013 do contain provision[s] for the protection of public health such as setbacks, noise level limits, water testing, air quality monitoring, etc. [sic] and industry certainly has a big role to play to ensure environmental and public health, the ultimate responsibility to ensure public health should rest with government, and not industry. That’s our sense as to why the wording was changed.

Dr. Eilish Cleary, New Brunswick’s Chief Medical Officer, was more succinct. In an email sent to me on June 20th, 2014, Dr. Cleary stated that the rules for industry were meant to protect the environment, not people.

One of the most frequently mentioned concerns at these public meetings was about the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing. Industry has a history of refusing to release specific details about the ingredients it uses in its frack fluids for fear of losing its advantage over other industry competitors. Stephanie Stoneleigh, the founder of Parents against Everyday Poisons spoke about one of the chemicals, Propargyl alcohol, used by Baker Hughes, an oil and gas company, for fracking in Pennsylvania. Propargyl alcohol is used to slow down corrosion of the well casings. She mentioned that this substance was classified as a hazardous waste under the US Resource Conservation and Recovery Act; a hazardous substance under the US Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act; and was listed under the US Pollution Prevention Act. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the permissible exposure rate for humans is one part per million “over an eight hour work shift” (Citizen Engagement Tour, Hillsborough, 19 June 2012). Stephanie wanted to know who would “protect [her]

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8 year old grandson from anything beyond one part per million in 8 hours?” Belliveau’s response was,

I thank you very much. We’ve taken note of your presentation. We’re going to get through as many people as we can. Please sir—[Next] (Citizen Engagement Tour, Hillsborough, 19 June 2012).

In other words, complete disregard for Stephanie’s concern about this highly toxic chemical that might be used in her community.

Having said that, the Natural Gas Group did address this issue, albeit in a roundabout way, by making it mandatory for oil and gas companies operating in New Brunswick to publicly disclose whatever chemicals they were going to frack with. We were told that this had come into effect June 23, 2011. But, what most people didn’t realize then, and now still, as explained by A. Daigle after receiving a question on this issue from Marc Babineau, is that water testing is not done to detect the presence of the actual chemicals used by industry in their frack fluids but to detect other parameters that are used as indicators for these chemicals.

You would not be testing for specific slick water fracturing at the beginning. You would be looking for things like chloride salts would be the first indicator (Citizen Engagement Tour, Bouctouche, 22 June 2012).

It should be noted that at no time did any of our group of activists or any other citizen ask the panel about the degree of confidence people should have in government using indicators as extrapolation for contamination of our drinking water. So, we were at the disadvantage of not knowing that we should have prodded them for more information about these indicators. Penningroth, Yarrow, Figueroa, Bowen, and Delgado (2013, p. 161) suggest that the use of indicators as proof of contamination is something that will have to be determined in court on a case-by-case basis.

The health report which A. Daigle alluded to earlier was released by Dr. Eilish Cleary, in September, 2012, four months after the release of the government’s discussion paper. The government had initially kept the release of Dr. Cleary’s

15 report a secret. However, this information was leaked to one of our activists, so we alerted the media and after considerable public pressure, the report was released publicly in its entirety a month later. In an interview with Adam Huras and April Cunningham for the Telegraph-Journal, a daily tabloid, on December 12, 2012, Dr. Cleary told these two reporters that she would have liked her recommendations on public health to be included in the regulations. But by issuing their discussion paper prior to the release of Dr. Cleary’s report, this precluded incorporation of any of her 30 recommendations into the discussion paper. Take for example recommendation 3.4. It states: “The Province should require that all hydraulic fracturing fluids contain additives that are the least toxic of any alternatives available.” This speaks directly to the concern Stoneleigh had about Propargyl alcohol.

Attempting to incorporate public health into the rules for industry now would be like adding a whole, uncooked onion into an already cooked French onion soup.

In comparing the rules for industry’s 12 sections, depicted in the third column of Table 1with the discussion paper’s 12 sections in the first column of the same, it is evident that they are mirror images of one another. This is what we refer to in institutional ethnography/political activist ethnography (Hussey, 2012) as an impenetrable ideological circle. The reason why I am calling this an ideological circle is because the Rules for Industry arose from the discussion paper and the discussion paper intended the Rules for Industry. The degree of impenetrability of this particular ideological circle is measured in terms of the variability in the number of subsections found within each text and is attributable to at least three factors. First, some sections of the Rules for Industry needed to be expanded to account for omissions in the discussion paper. Section 1, for instance, was expanded from five to six sub-sections so as to provide a description of what industry has to do in the event of misfires when an oil and gas company uses shot holes for seismic testing. This is now described under subsection 1.6 of the Rules for Industry. Second, some sections had to be trimmed because they were more applicable as “action items for the province” (New Brunswick Natural Gas Group, 2013, p.vi). For instance, sub-section 11.1 entitled “Publicizing the province’s environmental requirements and standards for oil and gas activities” and subsection 11.2 entitled “Public disclosure of environmental assessment data,”

16 which were both present in the discussion paper, were excluded from the Rules for industry. And third, amendments were made in response to what the panel members heard during the public consultation meetings such as the need to increase the damage deposit in sub-section 11.3 from $100,000 to $500,000 to account for possible damages to farm properties. But these are all minor changes.

Conclusion

Political activist ethnography has proved to be an invaluable tool in helping me establish proof that shale gas development was never part of the Progressive Conservative party’s 2010 election platform. Clearly, then, Premier Alward had no mandate to pursue this and suggests that our group of activists have perhaps not explored the legal avenues that might be available in seeking retribution for being pushed into a position of having to defend ourselves from an industry we were never consulted about, had no prior knowledge of, and had no insight of it becoming the Alward government’s flagship. Choosing to live in New Brunswick because of the quality of life we have here, why should we allow our tax dollars to be used to promote an industry that will destroy the very thing that makes us want to live here? And why should we have had to work untold hours to stop something that was never in the government’s election platform? Isn’t that what class action lawsuits are about?

But more importantly, if after being elected, a government such as the one discussed here, can arbitrarily choose to follow whatever course of action it wants, does this not undermine the very core of our democracy? Shale gas development is but a symptom of a larger problem—our electoral system. Getting rid of shale gas might offer a quick fix until the next Trojan horse arrives within our midst, and then what do we do? In addition to stopping shale gas, we need a made-in-New Brunswick political revolution.

References

Berry, S. (2011, August 22). Premier closes book on shale gas referendum debate. Alward says New Brunswickers had their say on the issue during 2010 election. Telegraph-Journal, p. A3

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Brufatto, C., Cochran, J., Conn, L., El-Zeghaty, S.Z.A.A., Fraboulet, B., Griffin, T., Simon, J., Justus, F., Levine, J.R., Montgomery, C., Murphy, D., Pfeiffer, J., Pornpoch, T., & Rishmani, L. (2003). Schlumb. Oil Field Rev. 15, 62-76.

Colborn, T., Kwiatkowski, C., Schultz, K. & Bachran, M. (2011). Natural Gas Operations from a Public Health Perspective. Human and Ecological Risk Assessment: an International Journal, 17:5, 1039-1056.

Deveau, J.L. (2014, February). 9 Ways to Fight Fracking: Resistance strategies from the frontline standoff in New Brunswick. Alternatives Journal, 40(1), Retrieved from http://www.alternativesjournal.ca/energy-and-resources/9-ways- fight-fracking

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Table 1. Comparison of Guiding Principles as they appear in discussion paper and rules for industry. Discussion paper List of sub-sections Rules for industry List of sub-sections guiding principles guiding principles 1) Addressing 1.1 1) Addressing 1.1 potential concerns 1.2 potential concerns 1.2 associated with of 1.3 associated with of 1.3 (sic) geophysical 1.4 (sic) geophysical 1.4 (seismic) activities 1.5 (seismic) activities 1.5 1.6 2) Preventing 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2) Preventing 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 potential 2.7 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10 2.11 potential 2.7 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.10 2.11 contaminants from 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 contaminants from 2.12 2.13 2.14 2.15 2.16 2.17 escaping the well 2.18 2.19 2.20 2.21 2.22 2.23 escaping the well 2.18 2.19 2.20 2.21 2.22 2.23 bore 2.24 2.25 2.26 2.27 2.28 2.29 bore 2.24 2.25 2.26 2.27 2.28 2.29 2.30 2.31 2.32 2.30 3) Assessing 3.1 3) Assessing 3.1 geological 3.2 geological 3.2 containment containment 3.3 3.3 outside the well outside the well bore bore 3.4 4) managing 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4) managing 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 wastes and wastes and preventing 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 preventing 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 potential potential 4.11 4.12 4.13 4.14 4.15 4.11 4.12 4.13 4.14 4.15 contaminants from contaminants from escaping the well 4.16 4.17 4.18 4.19 escaping the well 4.16 4.17 4.18 pad pad 5) monitoring to 5.1 5) monitoring to 5.1 protect water 5.2 protect water 5.2 quality 5.3 quality 5.3 5.4 5.5 6) providing for 6.1 6) providing for 6.1 the sustainable use 6.2 the sustainable use 6.2 of water 6.3 of water 6.3 6.4 6.4 6.5 6.5 6.6 6.7 7) addressing air 7.1 7) addressing air 7.1 emissions 7.2 emissions 7.2 including 7.3 including 7.3 greenhouse gases 7.4 greenhouse gases 7.4 7.5 7.5 7.6 7.6 7.7 8) addressing 8.1 8) addressing 8.1 public safety and public safety and emergency emergency planning planning 9) protecting 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9) protecting 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 communities and 9.5 9.6 9.7 9.8 communities and 9.5 9.6 9.7 9.8 the environment 9.9 9.10 9.11 9.12 the environment 9.9 9.10 9.11 9.12 9.13 9.13 9.14 10) reducing 10.1 10.2 10) reducing 10.1 10.2 financial risks to 10.3 10.4 financial risks to 10.3 10.4 landowners and 10.5 10.6 landowners and 10.5 the province and 10.7 10.8 the province and protecting 10.9 10.10 protecting landowner rights 10.11 landowner rights 11) sharing 11.1 11) sharing 11.1 information 11.2 information 11.2 11.3 11.3 11.4 11.4 11.5 11.6 11.7 12) maintaining an 12.1 12) maintaining an effective 12.2 effective regulatory 12.3 regulatory framework 12.4 framework 12.5 12.6 12.7