Commons committee to see oilsands impact first hand
A House of Commons standing committee plans to travel to the booming city of Fort McMurray, Alta., later this month to find out for itself whether the development of the oilsands is sustainable.
On Thursday, the natural resources committee interviewed witnesses, including the president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, to find a few preliminary answers to its questions about sustainability.
Pierre Alvarez told the committee that the entire economy of Western Canada is on fire but the cost of doing business in the West is so high that it will actually drag down growth in 2007.
"Companies are looking at strategies to stretch things out. How do they hang onto labour for longer? How do you design things a little differently?" he said.
Alvarez said observers are blaming the oilsands unfairly and that oilsands development makes up only one-quarter of all investment in the oil and gas sector.
He told the committee that many different sectors of the economy are fuelling growth in the western provinces and whether growth is sustainable is not just a question for the oilsands.
"We've got a period right now in Western Canada where, yes, it's oil and gas, but it's potash, it's uranium, it's the pine beetle, and the injection that's required from the cuts there. It's municipal infrastructure. It's Olympic infrastructure."
The association, which has offices in Calgary and St. John's, represents 150 member companiesthat explore for, develop and produce more than 95 per cent of the country's natural gas, crude oil, oilsands and elemental sulphur.
Liberal MP Alan Tonks, vice-chair of the committee, asked Dan Woynillowicz, an environmental policy analyst with the Pembina Institute, about the impact of oilsands development.
Pembina is an independent environment policy research and education organization with offices in Drayton Valley, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Ottawa.
"Is the pace and the acceleration of development in the oilsands sustainable from a social and environmental and an economic perspective?" Tonks asked.
Woynillowicz said the simple answer is no, and not just for the environment. "The regional health authority is running at about half capacity in terms of the number of total medical staff it would require to service the population of Fort McMurray."
Fort McMurray, about 450 kilometres northeast of Edmonton, has experienced a huge population boom because of oilsands development. It has been described as the capital of the oilsands.
According to the Canadian Press, the Fort McMurray area has a "shadow population" of thousands of temporary construction workers. Its population was about 34,000 in 1996 and it's estimated that it will rise to about 100,000 over the next five years.