MINING and COMMUNITIES in NORTHERN CANADA: HISTORY, POLITICS, and MEMORY Edited by Arn Keeling and John Sandlos

MINING AND COMMUNITIES IN NORTHERN CANADA: HISTORY, POLITICS, AND MEMORY Edited by Arn Keeling and John Sandlos ISBN 978-1-55238-805-1 THIS BOOK IS AN OPEN ACCESS E-BOOK. It is an electronic version of a book that can be purchased in physical form through any bookseller or on-line retailer, or from our distributors. Please support this open access publication by requesting that your university purchase a print copy of this book, or by purchasing a copy yourself. If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected] Cover Art: The artwork on the cover of this book is not open access and falls under traditional copyright provisions; it cannot be reproduced in any way without written permission of the artists and their agents. The cover can be displayed as a complete cover image for the purposes of publicizing this work, but the artwork cannot be extracted from the context of the cover of this specific work without breaching the artist’s copyright. 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Acknowledgement: We acknowledge the wording around open access used by Australian publisher, re.press, and thank them for giving us permission to adapt their wording to our policy http://www.re-press.org | chapter 7 Indigenous Battles for Environmental Protection and Economic Benefits during the Commercialization of the Alberta Oil Sands, 1967–1986 Hereward Longley INTRODUCTION Since the late 1990s, the Alberta oil sands industry has become an economic powerhouse that employs thousands of indigenous and non-indigenous people, generates billions of dollars of economic activity, and produces over two million barrels of oil per day. However, it has also become the source of controversy and disputes over environmental impacts that include large-scale landscape disturbance and wildlife habitat destruction due primarily to open pit mining, atmospheric pollution, carbon dioxide emissions, and watershed pollution that may be related to 207 high cancer rates in downstream communities.1 Many indigenous people in the region have viewed government regulators as negligent in con- sidering the impact of oil sands development on their traditional lands, treaty rights, and lives.2 Though there is a substantial historical litera- ture on hydrocarbon development in Alberta, there remains a shortage of research into social and environmental impacts and conflicts and the consequences of the initial development phase of the oil sands industry for indigenous communities.3 This chapter demonstrates that while the environmental impacts of oil sands activities on indigenous communities are often understood to be recent controversies, they are contemporary manifestations of issues that first emerged during the initial commercial development phase of the oil sands industry from the late-1960s to mid-1980s. The early impacts of the Great Canadian Oil Sands Ltd. (Suncor) and Syncrude oil sands operations were most acutely felt in the closest community, Fort McKay, located approximately twenty kilometres downstream on the west bank of the Athabasca River. Strip mining, atmospheric emissions, watershed contamination, and population increases from incoming workers and the industries that support large-scale synthetic oil production caused an array of adverse impacts on proximate ecosystems and undermined the capacity of the Fort McKay community to continue their hunting, trapping, and food gathering practices. In addition to these impacts on resources, Fort McKay was also left out of the employment opportunities and other economic benefits of industrialization. The Alberta government and the oil sands industry had minimal regard for indigenous peoples in the 1970s and 1980s, focused as they were on the rapid production of oil and dismissive of indigenous concerns as a federal responsibility. By the 1980s, the Fort McKay community was forced to respond to the environmental issues associated with oil sands development and their economic exclusion from the new industrial economy. To assess these issues, I use an approach drawn from several works on the history of resource development and indigenous people in Northern Canada, particularly those which call for a critical examination of the agency of indigenous peoples to shape and influence the coloniz- ing forces of industrialization and the encroachments of western institutions.4 As with many northern indigenous communities, Fort McKay 208 7 | INDIGENOUS BATTLES representatives attempted to respond to the impacts of the oil sands industry in the 1960s to the 1980s through the various legal and political channels that were available to them. In spite of extensive efforts, however, the community was unable to extend any influence over develop- ers or regulators to better protect their environment. Yet in forming the Athabasca Tribal Council (ATC) with other First Nations governments in the region, the community was ultimately able to make progress in the areas of employment and participation that increased the economic benefits of oil sands development for indigenous communities in northern Alberta. DEVELOPMENT AND ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS The development of the oil sands industry emerged as part of a larger twentieth-century process of industrialization in Northern Canada that exploited indigenous lands for resources and economic gain.5 Change in northeastern Alberta began with the establishment of Fort McMurray as a major transport site during the 1930s and World War II. By the 1960s, the Lake Athabasca region had been affected by the uranium-mining boom at Uranium City, Saskatchewan, the construction of the Bennett Dam on the Peace River in British Columbia (which affected the Peace–Athabasca Delta in Alberta), and the establishment of commercial fisheries on Lake Athabasca.6 Wider developments also prompted the commercialization of the Athabasca oil sands industry, including events in the oil-producing countries of the Middle East and the increasing volatility of the Cold War between the mid-1950s and the 1960s. In 1956, in response to the Suez crisis, the Sun Oil Company of Philadelphia took a majority position in Great Canadian Oil Sands Ltd. (GCOS). In 1966, Cities Service, Imperial Oil, Royalite, and Atlantic-Richfield formed the Syncrude consortium.7 In 1967, GCOS opened as the first commercial synthetic oil production operation, followed by the Syncrude project in 1978.8 In the 1970s, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed supply restrictions, and subsequently, the price of oil increased, creating an energy crisis in Canada and throughout the Western Hereward Longley 209 world. The supply crunch impelled the Alberta and federal governments to expand synthetic oil production irrespective of environmental consequences. In response to a federal report on the deficiencies of the 1973 Syncrude environmental impact assessment, Alberta Environment Minister William J. Yurko wrote to federal Environment Minister Jeanne Sauvé stating that a secure oil supply outweighed environmental risks: We know that major information gaps exist in respect to the baseline environmental data in the entire area. Nevertheless, in light of Canada’s critical energy balance, it did not and does not appear prudent to delay oil sands development until all needed information is available.9 Energy security concerns prompted the federal, Alberta, and Ontario governments to take a combined 30 per cent equity in the Syncrude project following the withdrawal of Atlantic Richfield Canada (ARCAN) in December 1974.10 With the price of oil and inflation rising through the 1970s and the early 1980s, the successful development of the oil sands industry was a top priority for the federal and Alberta governments until the collapse of oil prices in 1982. The rush toward development caused dramatic environmental change in communities such as Fort McKay. By the 1980s, the Fort McKay community reported that they were seeing far fewer birds, squir- rels, muskrats, and moose that had

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