Charles Homans at FP calls Canada the biggest winner from the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, because oil sands extraction presents fewer risks, according to the Canadian government. Still, it remains to be seen what kind of regulatory and investment climate surrounding oil extraction will emerge in the months and years ahead.

Other oil spill winners include yesterday’s fossil-fuel villains (Exxon), Republican governors, lawyers and democratic lobbyists. Added to this unholy alliance are environmental groups whose coffers will swell in the wake of the disaster.

What does your company release into the environment and what does it publish in its annual report? According to a Globe and Mail article (found here), only 10 of the 60 largest Canadian companies release data for all four major environmental items (carbon emissions, water usage, energy usage and waste production). They say, you change what you measure. With so little public disclosure of environmental indicators going on, it is no wonder that we remain a polluting country.

Beyond legal compliance, the rigorous and methodical collection and analysis of environmental data helps increase awareness at all levels of a company and incite more efficient (and profitable) operations.

I recently got a chance to follow up with environmental lawyer Dianne Saxe on the upcoming changes to the Ontario Environmental Approvals process. We had done an interview a couple months ago, but with the changes now in proposed acts, it was time to follow up.

Click here to learn more about our regular environmental updates.

The changes to the approvals process should make Ontario business’ lives a bit easier, but it also imposes much more serious responsibilities on the shoulders of corporate directors. The fines that you may face, should you not respect your permits, are substantial and much easier to apply – so beware. With high turnover at many companies, some neglect their permits, stored away in a filing cabinet, as Dianne mentions in the interview, this is a very dangerous practice. Time to dust off the permits and get a crash course in the new system, take a look at the video below to get started and we will be covering these changes in detail at NimonikApp.ca (get a free account today!).

Dianne wrote up a great post on the changes which can be found on her blog, envirolaw.com, here.

I recently got the chance to sit down with Richard Girard of the Polaris institute in Ottawa. He has just released a corporate profile of oil pipeline giant Enbridge. We run through his findings, how the pipelines are compromising the environmental health and safety of local communities and the ties between government and industry. Our interview went a bit long, but we go through a lot of interesting issues surrounding the extraction, transportation and use of oil in the Canadian west.

You can download the full Corporate Profile Report here.

TarSands Watch
Polaris Institute

While we primarily service industry, it is more important than ever to ensure industry is acting responsibly and transparently. With millions of barrels of oil pouring into the gulf, we need to ensure our government aires not the side of caution, something I fear we have not done in the TarSands.

Tarsands production consumption of natural resources

Pembina goes on to estimate that the increased tar sands production made possible by a new half-million barrels per day pipeline from the tar sands would: consume the amount of natural gas consumed by 1.3 million Canadian households each year; disturb 11.5 square kilometers of Boreal forest; consume 200 million barrels of processing water; and create over 4 billion litres of toxic tailings of which 455 million litres will leak into Alberta’s watersheds.157

Spills and leaks in the pipeline

Spills, leaks and ruptures that have occurred on Enbridge pipelines over the past ten years. Between 1999 and 2008, across all of Enbridge’s operations there were 610 spills that released close to 132,000 barrels (21 million litres) of
hydrocarbons into the environment.1 This amounts to approximately half of the oil that spilled from the oil tanker the Exxon Valdez after it struck a rock in Prince William Sound, Alaska in 1988.

In New England there is a program in place designed to help recover overfished species. Fisheries managers there have been implementing a system, known as “catch shares” aimed at regulating the harvesting of groundfish. A brief description:

“Where previous systems enforced seasonal, area-based and other limits to reduce catches, catch shares give set quotas to individual fishermen, who are then free to decide how and when to fill them. They can also lease quotas to others or, as in Marciano’s case, sell them off. In theory, catch shares have economic and ecological benefits, making for steadier income streams for fishermen and improving incentives for environmentally friendly practices.”

More specifically:

“Considered a market-based solution, the idea is to minimize the competition for a limited resource by giving individual fishers the right to catch a certain amount of fish. Among the potential benefits, quotas can stabilize fishermen’s income and allow them to fill their quotas whenever they like, spreading out fishing efforts. Doing away with season restrictions reduces ‘derby’ conditions, in which fishermen race out, even in dangerous weather, to catch as much as possible. It also eliminates seasonal market gluts, potentially increasing the prices fishermen can command for their catch. On the ecological side, catch shares can be designed to limit the catch of non-target fish, increase populations of regulated fish and possibly encourage better resource stewardship.”

Predictably, the new system isn’t popular with everyone, and success depends on the will of politicians to resist pressure to address perceived economic inequities that befall some of the fishermen.