H2Oil: The ongoing story of greed versus First Nations people

H2Oil opens with a dramatic aerial shot of the tar sands – which are awe-inspiring, but in a bad way, like watching a plague of locusts advance toward your crops. You just know it’s not going to end well. The tar mines are a massive sprawl of destroyed landscape populated by machines and the people who work them; otherwise not a sign of life. No trees, not even bushes or grasses. Certainly no animals; birds unfortunate enough to land in the tailing ponds are doomed.

H2Oil is really the ongoing story of men seeking money versus Canada’s First Nations, versus ‘the environment,’ versus anything that gets in the way of that money, including integrity. Guess who’s winning and who’s dying? It is one of 2009’s top documentaries and is a must-see for Canadians. H2Oil tells the story of the tar sands from four different perspectives: First Nations peoples, scientists and other experts, a couple running a bottled spring water business, and indirectly the government/business point-of-view. (For practical purposes, government and business are the same with respect to tar mining.)

It’s just business: Big Oil and Big Government

For businessmen, tar is gold. It’s a huge bonanza, and none of them care about the health effects because none of them live anywhere near it or have a functioning conscience. Same for government officials, and as the film points out, there is a revolving door between the Alberta government and Big Oil.

The Alberta Environment Ministry is located in Petroleum Plaza, and when Suncor employees hosted a public session in a town near the tar sands, they brought bottled water. And an Alberta Assistant Deputy Minister – with a straight face, no less – is on film spinning tar mining as a benefit because it removes the oil – a contaminant – from the land.

The federal government is no better; the film shows Prime Minister Harper comparing tar mining to building the Great Wall of China or the Pyramids. The subtle difference that those were creations and tar mining is destruction escaped him. And to be fair, the film also showed former PM Jean Chretien fully supporting the tar sands, and former PM Paul Martin. Not mentioned in the film, but current Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff is also a big fan.

Everyone else: Slow down

Rates of cancer are higher, possibly much higher, in the First Nations people living near the tar sands, but government and industry downplay the danger. When a local doctor raised concerns about the frequency of rare cancers in the community, he was silenced by the Canadian government.

Suncor’s (2006) own estimates showed that if people eat the moose, fish, berries, and so on from the region around the tar mines, an additional 312-453 cases of cancer per 100,000 would be expected. Alberta Health and Wellness (2007) claimed even that industry study was exaggerated and “only” 17-33 additional deaths per 100,000 would be expected. Normal, by-the-way, is 1 per 100,000. It is disturbingly reminiscent of the asbestos cover-up, in which the asbestos companies concealed death rates of workers – and continued practices known to kill.

Other experts have pointed out that all the vast tailing ponds leak toxic substances into the Athabasca river; government and industry minimise the effects. Tailing ponds are huge; a breach would result in a spill equal to 300 Exxon Valdez ships.

Same for water usage; business asketh for more water and the government giveth freely, regardless of long-term consequences.

Oh-oh Canada

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) commits Canada to proportional supplies of oil – and water – to the United States. Even if Canadians are freezing in the dark, we are legally obliged to continue to sell oil to the United States. The Orwellian-named Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) provides energy security for the United States, but not for Canada.

We are not an energy “superpower.”  We are an energy satellite.

Canada is pretty well the only country that has not set aside any oil for our own use, and we certainly have not been building a post-oil economy.

Up to 4 barrels of oil is used to produce one barrel of oil from the tar sands, and that oil produces three times the greenhouse gas emissions as extraction of conventional crude.

Fully half the Athabaska glacier has melted away. This glacier supplies the Athabaska river. Climate change is causing the glacier to melt. Climate change is, of course, accelerated by the burning of oil.

It makes my heart cry

One elder from a First Nations tribe, surveying the devastation brought by tar mining, said “It makes my heart cry.” All that was given to us is destroyed, he said, all for one thing – oil.

Another resident said that everybody is afraid to look at the impacts, because they may be so serious that we have to stop. And we just can’t afford to, because we haven’t made any serious attempt at building a sustainable economy.

H2Oil builds one particular theme throughout, and that is that people are getting fed up. “We have to take our power back,” said one Fort Chipewyan resident. Another said that if the the government breaks promises in a treaty, then the treaty is invalid and the First Nations will take their country back.

The sad reality is that international trade agreements move power from local stakeholders to remote moneymakers; it’s average people against guys in suits. Until local people take back their power, they will continue to die as a result of tar mining, Alberta will continue to be plundered and ruined, and Canada will continue the shame of destroying First Nations people for short-term profit.

Recommendation?

Not as gripping as An Inconvenient Truth or The Corporation, every Canadian should nonetheless see H2Oil. We need to know what is being done in our name to First Nations people and to Alberta. We need to understand the driving force behind Stephen Harper and Canada’s position on certain global issues.

For more information, check out Tony Clarke, author of Tar Sands Showdown: Canada and the New Politics of Oil in an Age of Climate Change. Clarke appeared in H2Oil.

Two other great reads on the topic are:

• Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent by Andrew Nikiforuk
• Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta Is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (And Doesn’t Seem to Care) by William Marsden