Looking Into the Mouth of Premier David Alward's Trojan Horse

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. 1 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. 3 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,

Load more