Thank you, Mr. Speaker. There can be no doubt that the people of the Northwest Territories are concerned about fracking. Later today I will table a petition with close to 800 signatures from people in the Sahtu and people across the Northwest Territories expressing concern about fracking and insisting that this government exert its authority to refer future applications to a full environmental statement.
The stated reasons for their concerns include:
1. Horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is
new to the NWT and is clearly controversial. It is banned or under moratorium in many places in the world.
2. Fracking permanently contaminates very large
volumes of freshwater. This does not match the NWT Water Stewardship Strategy.
3. In other places, fracking brought lots of outside
workers; alcohol, illegal drugs and crime with it. We don’t have a plan to deal with an increase in these social issues.
4. Fracking will require transporting toxic fracking
chemicals and polluted wastewater to our communities, along our highways and on the Mackenzie River. NWT workers will also be exposed to these hazardous substances.
5. Sahtu elders tell us that water flows through the
deep geology of the Sahtu and that different areas are connected in ways that science has
not documented. We also know that underground networks of fractured rock and wells will eventually leak.
6. We have to look at the bigger picture. Our land,
water, wildlife, cultures, communities and economies are already under stress and will suffer from the additional stress of fracking and associated development.
7. Extracting oil and gas increases greenhouse
gas emissions and makes global climate change happen faster. Greenhouse gas emissions come both directly from the fracking operation and from burning the oil and gas that is extracted.
8. The decision to allow fracking in the NWT
without an environmental assessment has created tension in the Sahtu and across the Northwest Territories.
Under the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, every agency of this government had the authority to refer fracking applications for environmental assessment, yet fracking has already begun in the Sahtu without an environmental assessment. The list of accidents and spills has already begun to add up. Just in the last two days, two trucks carrying fracking wastewater have rolled over, both perilously close to rivers.
I seek unanimous consent to conclude my statement.
---Unanimous consent granted