Elizabeth May: Mr. Speaker, I am rising to pursue a question that was asked some time back, but it is still very relevant.

I asked this question in question period on May 17, and it related to a report that had just been released that the federal government was encouraging leases in the Beaufort Sea and other areas of our Arctic. At the same time, the National Energy Board had come up with a way to reduce what are fairly onerous requirements on oil companies that wished to drill in the Arctic. The National Energy Board had relaxed its requirements for proof of being able to drill a same-season relief well.

I think a lot of Canadians did not know what a relief well was until we watched the failure of one in the Gulf of Mexico with the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster. We certainly saw there why there is a need for it. For example, if there is a blowout at depths in the ocean, a way to stop the blowout is needed, and a relief well is required.

In the case of the Arctic, with much more difficult climatic conditions, if a blowout occurred during winter months when there is ice cover and no daylight, the chances of being able to get in a same-season relief well are critical. The relief well would have to be put in before the winter conditions became an impossible obstacle, in order to stop a blowout.

On May 17, I raised this question: How would we eliminate the risks of blowouts during drilling exploration and development in our most fragile ecosystem in the Arctic?

Since I first raised the issue, the French multinational giant, Total S.A., aborted its efforts to pursue oil drilling in the Arctic in September. The CEO of Total, Christophe de Margerie, told the Financial Times that there was simply too large a risk. In fact, from his point of view, the financial risk to his company of attempting to drill in the Arctic would outweigh any benefit. As he put it: “Oil in Greenland would be a disaster…. A leak would do too much damage to the image of the company”.

We have a situation where at least one large oil company decided it is not worth the risk. However a second large oil company, Royal Dutch Shell, abandoned those attempts after repeated failures, also in September, after spending almost $5 billion in efforts to get at oil in offshore Alaska, in the Arctic.

Here we have a situation where Canada is about to take the chair of the Arctic Council, which is a huge opportunity for this nation. The Minister of Health, a member of the Inuit nation, will be chairing the Arctic Council table.

This is a time for Canada to show leadership and say we will not subsidize oil and gas, we will not promote oil and gas in the Arctic and we will insist on same-season relief wells. We will not allow relaxation of standards and we will adopt a precautionary principle in concert with the other circumpolar nations who sit at the Arctic Council table. It is critical that we protect our Arctic.

Greg Rickford: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to the question of the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

Our government is committed to ensuring that a strong and prosperous north helps shape the future of our nation. Without a doubt, the north continues to be a top priority of our government. We are carrying on with the delivery and improvement of key programs and initiatives under the northern strategy – programs and initiatives that benefit all Canadians.

The north is home to world-class resource potential, representing tremendous economic opportunity. Our government continues to encourage investment in northern communities while ensuring that investment is supported by a world-class safety and environmental protection regime in the north.

In anticipation and preparation for future investment in the north, the National Energy Board initiated a public review of Arctic safety and environmental offshore drilling requirements. The final report of the public review released by the board on December 15, 2011, reconfirmed that Canada’s Arctic offshore regulatory regime is one of the safest and most stringent regimes in the world.

To emphasize this finding, the report included a series of new safety and environmental protection filing requirements for Arctic offshore drilling programs. These new requirements were developed based on input received during the public review. They will contribute to the already rigorous review process that the National Energy Board undertakes when considering whether to authorize oil and gas activities in the north.

The issuance of mineral rights on crown lands is important to encouraging investment in the north. Working with northern and aboriginal governments and people, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada issues rights to prospective resource developers. The rights issuance process in the north is open and transparent and, as in other jurisdictions in Canada, is market-based. An exploration licence issued by the department gives the developer an exclusive right to explore and to drill for oil and gas.

Currently, there is no drilling in the Arctic offshore. Any proposed activity associated with an exploration licence would require the authorization of the National Energy Board, and the review process would include public consultations. Also, before a drilling program would be authorized, the applicant would need to demonstrate that it meets the safety and environmental protection filing requirements for offshore drilling in the Canadian Arctic.

Our government is committed to helping the north realize its true potential as an economically healthy, prosperous and secure region within a strong and sovereign Canada.

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The newspapers along the route are finally noticing that the climate is getting hostile. The Saskatoon Star Phoenix has a story “Pakistan floods, Russian heat fit climate trend around the globe: extreme weather events become more frequent: scientists,” while the Globe and Mail front page shows a dramatic image headed “Crisis in Pakistan: 13 million: The Pakistani floods have now affected more victims than the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami…”

Bill McKibben writes in Eaarth that these catalogues of global events, inventories of disaster, are how we most often describe climate impact. “The trouble with this endless collection of anecdotes,” he writes, “…is that it misses the essential flavour of the new world we’re constructing.” He calls that new world “Eaarth” in an effort to distinguish it from our old planet. The message of his book is sobering. We do not live on that old planet anymore. Everything we had taken for granted — relatively stable climate, changing over millennia, not decades — cannot be taken for granted anymore. It is not exactly the “Brave New World” of Aldous Huxley, but it is a new world and we have to be brave to figure out how to live on it. We have to be resolute in moving off fossil fuels quickly to keep the world liveable.

Maybe this summer’s round of news clippings will wake people up to the climate reality. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released data demonstrating that June 2010 was the hottest June on record — for both land and sea temperatures. If you look at NOAA’s global maps (www.westcoastclimateequity.org) you will see that our part of the world was about the only place on the planet not super-heated through June. June was the 304th consecutive month with a combined global land and surface temperature above the 20th-century average. NOAA data put the first decade of the new millennium as the hottest decade on record, with the last 12 months the warmest 12 months, the last six months the warmest six months, and April, May and June 2010, the hottest April, May, and June on record. Highest ever temperature record for Asia, a record set in May in Pakistan, was just under 130 degrees F. As Bill McKibben commented, “I can turn my oven to 130 degrees.”

Russia’s heat wave caused a doubling in the daily death rate due to heat stress and from the smoke from fires that ringed the city. Wildfires covered 1,740 square kilometers. The street temperature in Moscow was 40 degrees C (104 degrees F). And the drought decimated the Russian wheat crop. President Putin ordered a ban on wheat exports. Ukraine also has suffered serious crop failures. It is simply too hot for the wheat to grow well. The Russian export ban will cause the price of grains to rise globally, threatening global food security.

Drought has also gripped much of Africa, with Niger reporting the worst drought in its history with villages being abandoned, leaving dead livestock behind.

Torrential rains hit much of Asia, with significant downpours also impacting Poland and Germany. China and Pakistan were hard hit. Nearly 1,500 people have died in the landslides in China. Approximately 1,600 people have died in Pakistan due to the flooding. The humanitarian impact extends far beyond the death toll. Thirteen million people have been affected. Millions are displaced. The floods due to a combination of torrential rains and illegal logging. Warmer air holds more moisture than cooler air. We are all seeing the results of our changed atmosphere in more frequent, extreme events of torrential rainfall.

Glaciers have collapsed. From July 6-7, Greenland’s Jakobshavn Isbrae glacier lost a nearly 7 square kilometre chunk of ice and retreated one mile. On August 5, a different Greenland glacier, the Petermann Glacier, lost a 251 square kilometre “ice island.” Meanwhile, Arctic sea ice was at its lowest extent ever for the month of June.

Climate scientists are always careful to say that any one event cannot be blamed on the climate crisis, but they are clear that it is highly unlikely that the spate of climate disasters could have occurred if not for the dramatic changes in global climate caused by human activity.

The first task on this new Eaarth is to end our addiction to fossil fuels – quickly. We must avoid those “tipping points” in the atmosphere that condemn us to an unlivable planet. Its grim characteristics were described by scientist Stephen Hawking who fears Earth “could end up like Venus, at 250 degrees centigrade and raining sulphuric acid.” Such an end point remains unlikely, but possible. Avoiding it requires a dramatically different course than that set by the current government of ever expanding tar sands and no domestic plan to cut carbon. Once that new course has been set, the next steps require figuring out how we live on a new and less hospitable planet. We need strong, resilient communities, greater local food security, a green energy revolution. And we need governments around the world to wake up to the reality that there is no larger threat to our economy, our society, our future—and our present—than the climate crisis.

Elizabeth E. May is an Officer of the Order of Canada, Leader of the Green Party of Canada and nominate candidate for Parliament in Saanich Gulf Islands.

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