WEBVTT

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Hi everyone.

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The world's largest and most devastating
environmental and industrial project

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is situated in the heart of the largest
and most intact forest in the world,

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Canada's boreal forest.

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It stretches right across
Northern Canada, in Labrador,

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it's home to the largest remaining
wild caribou herd in the world:

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the George River caribou herd,

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numbering approximately 400,000 animals.

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Unfortunately, when I was there,
I couldn't find one of them,

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but you have the antlers as proof.

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All across the boreal,

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we're blessed with this incredible
abundance of wetlands.

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Wetlands, globally, are one
of the most endangered ecosystems.

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They're absolutely critical ecosystems,

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they clean air, they clean water,

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they sequester large amounts
of greenhouse gases,

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and they're home
to a huge diversity of species.

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In the boreal, they are also the home

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where almost 50 percent of the 800 bird
species found in North America

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migrate north to breed
and raise their young.

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In Ontario, the boreal marches down south
to the north shore of Lake Superior.

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And these incredibly
beautiful boreal forests

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were the inspiration for some of the most
famous art in Canadian history,

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the Group of Seven
were very inspired by this landscape,

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and so the boreal is not just a really key
part of our natural heritage,

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but also an important part
of our cultural heritage.

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In Manitoba, this is an image
from the east side of Lake Winnipeg,

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and this is the home of the newly
designated UNESCO Cultural Heritage site.

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In Saskatchewan,
as across all of the boreal,

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home to some of our most famous rivers,

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an incredible network of rivers and lakes
that every school-age child learns about,

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the Peace, the Athabasca,
the Churchill here, the Mackenzie,

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and these networks
were the historical routes

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for the voyageur and the coureur de bois,

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the first non-aboriginal
explorers of Northern Canada

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that, taking from
the First Nations people,

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used canoes and paddled to explore

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for a trade route,
a Northwest Passage for the fur trade.

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In the North, the boreal
is bordered by the tundra,

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and just below that, in Yukon,

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we have this incredible valley,
the Tombstone Valley.

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And the Tombstone Valley is home
to the Porcupine caribou herd.

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Now you've probably heard
about the Porcupine caribou herd

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in the context of its breeding ground
in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

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Well, the wintering ground
is also critical

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and it also is not protected,

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and is potentially, could be potentially,
exploited for gas and mineral rights.

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The western border of the boreal
in British Columbia

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is marked by the Coast Mountains,

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and on the other side of those mountains

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is the greatest remaining
temperate rainforest in the world,

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the Great Bear Rainforest,

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and we'll discuss that in a few minutes
in a bit more detail.

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All across the boreal,

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it's home for a huge incredible range
of indigenous peoples,

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and a rich and varied culture.

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And I think that one of the reasons

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why so many of these groups have
retained a link to the past,

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know their native languages,

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the songs, the dances, the traditions,

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I think part of that reason
is because of the remoteness,

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the span and the wilderness

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of this almost 95 percent
intact ecosystem.

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And I think particularly now,

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as we see ourselves in a time
of environmental crisis,

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we can learn so much from these people

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who have lived so sustainably
in this ecosystem

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for over 10,000 years.

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In the heart of this ecosystem
is the very antithesis

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of all of these values
that we've been talking about,

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and I think these
are some of the core values

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that make us proud to be Canadians.

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This is the Alberta tar sands,

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the largest oil reserves on the planet
outside of Saudi Arabia.

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Trapped underneath the boreal forest
and wetlands of northern Alberta

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are these vast reserves
of this sticky, tar-like bitumen.

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And the mining
and the exploitation of that

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is creating devastation on a scale
that the planet has never seen before.

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I want to try to convey
some sort of a sense of the size of this.

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If you look at that truck there,

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it is the largest truck
of its kind on the planet.

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It is a 400-ton-capacity dump truck

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and its dimensions are 45 feet long
by 35 feet wide and 25 feet high.

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If I stand beside that truck,

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my head comes to around the bottom
of the yellow part of that hubcap.

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Within the dimensions of that truck,

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you could build a 3,000-square-foot
two-story home quite easily.

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I did the math.

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So instead of thinking of that as a truck,
think of that as a 3,000-square-foot home.

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That's not a bad size home.

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And line those trucks / homes
back and forth

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across there from the bottom
all the way to the top.

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And then think of how large
that very small section of one mine is.

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Now, you can apply that same kind
of thinking here as well.

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Now, here you see...
Of course, as you go further on,

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these trucks become like a pixel.

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Again, imagine those
all back and forth there.

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How large is that one portion of a mine?

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That would be a huge,
vast metropolitan area,

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probably much larger
than the city of Victoria.

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And this is just one of a number of mines,

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10 mines so far right now.

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This is one section of one mining complex,

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and there are about another 40 or 50
in the approval process.

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No tar sands mine has actually
ever been denied approval,

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so it is essentially a rubber stamp.

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The other method of extraction
is what's called the in situ.

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And here, massive amounts of water

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are superheated and pumped
through the ground,

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through these vasts networks of pipelines,

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seismic lines, drill paths,
compressor stations.

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And even though this looks
maybe not quite as repugnant as the mines,

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it's even more damaging in some ways.

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It impacts and fragments
a larger part of the wilderness,

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where there is 90 percent
reduction of key species,

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like woodland caribou and grizzly bears,

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and it consumes
even more energy, more water,

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and produces at least
as much greenhouse gas.

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So these in situ developments are at least
as ecologically damaging as the mines.

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The oil produced from either method

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produces more greenhouse gas
emissions than any other oil.

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This is one of the reasons
why it's called the world's dirtiest oil.

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It's also one of the reasons

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why it is the largest and fastest-growing
single source of carbon in Canada,

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and it is also a reason
why Canada is now number three

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in terms of producing carbon per person.

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The tailings ponds are the largest toxic
impoundments on the planet.

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Oil sands... or rather,
I should say tar sands...

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Oil sands is a PR-created term

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so that the oil companies
wouldn't be trying to promote something

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that sounds like a sticky tar-like
substance that's the world's dirtiest oil.

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So they decided to call it oil sands.

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The tar sands consume more water
than any other oil process,

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three to five barrels of water
are taken, polluted

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and then returned into tailings ponds,

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the largest toxic
impoundments on the planet.

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SemCrude, just one of the licensees,
in just one of their tailings ponds,

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dumps 250,000 tons
of this toxic gunk every single day.

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That's creating the largest toxic
impoundments in the history of the planet.

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So far, this is enough toxin to cover
the face of Lake Erie a foot deep.

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And the tailings ponds
range in size up to 9,000 acres.

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That's two-thirds the size
of the entire island of Manhattan.

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That's like from Wall Street
at the southern edge of Manhattan

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up to maybe 120th Street.

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So this is one of the larger
tailings ponds.

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This might be, what? I don't know,
half the size of Manhattan.

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And you can see in the context,

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it's just a relatively small section
of one of 10 mining complexes

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and another 40 to 50
on stream to be approved soon.

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And of course, these tailings ponds...

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Well, you can't see
many ponds from outer space

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and you can see these, so maybe
we should stop calling them ponds...

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These massive toxic wastelands are built

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unlined and on the banks
of the Athabasca River.

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And the Athabasca River drains downstream
to a range of aboriginal communities.

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In Fort Chipewyan, the 800 people there,
are finding toxins in the food chain,

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this has been scientifically proven.

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The tar sands toxins
are in the food chain,

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and this is causing cancer
rates up to 10 times

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what they are in the rest of Canada.

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In spite of that, people have to live,
have to eat this food in order to survive.

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The incredibly high price of flying food

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into these remote
Northern aboriginal communities

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and the high rate of unemployment

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makes this an absolute
necessity for survival.

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And not that many years ago,
I was lent a boat by a First Nations man,

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and he said, "When you
go out on the river,

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do not under any
circumstances eat the fish.

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It's carcinogenic."

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And yet, on the front porch
of that man's cabin,

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I saw four fish.

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He had to feed his family to survive.

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And as a parent, I just can't imagine
what that does to your soul.

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And that's what we're doing.

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The boreal forest
is also perhaps our best defense

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against global warming and climate change.

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The boreal forest sequesters more carbon
than any other terrestrial ecosystem.

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And this is absolutely key.

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So what we're doing is,

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we're taking the most concentrated
greenhouse gas sink...

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Twice as much greenhouse
gases are sequestered

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in the boreal per acre
than the tropical rainforests.

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And what we're doing is we're destroying

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this carbon sink,
turning it into a carbon bomb.

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And we're replacing that
with the largest industrial project

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in the history of the world,

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which is producing the most high-carbon
greenhouse-gas emitting oil in the world.

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And we're doing this on the second largest
oil reserves on the planet.

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This is one of the reasons why Canada,
originally a climate change hero...

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We were one of the first
signatories of the Kyoto Accord.

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Now we're the country
that has full-time lobbyists

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in the European Union and Washington DC,

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threatening trade wars

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when these countries talk about wanting
to bring in positive legislation

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to limit the import of high-carbon fuels,

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of greenhouse gas emissions,
anything like this,

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at international conferences,
whether they're in Copenhagen or Cancun,

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international conferences
on climate change,

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we're the country that gets
the dinosaur award every single day,

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as being the biggest
obstacle to progress on this issue.

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Just 70 miles downstream

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is the world's largest freshwater delta,
the Peace-Athabasca Delta,

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the only one at the juncture
of all four migratory flyways.

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This is a globally significant wetland,
perhaps the greatest on the planet.

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Incredible habitat
for half the bird species

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you find in North America, migrating here.

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And also the last refuge
for the largest herd of wild bison,

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and also, of course, critical habitat
for another whole range of other species.

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But it too is being threatened

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by the massive amount of water
being drawn from the Athabasca,

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which feeds these wetlands,

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and also the incredible toxic burden

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of the largest toxic unlined
impoundments on the planet,

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which are leaching in to the food chain
for all the species downstream.

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So as bad as all that is, things are going
to get much worse... much, much worse.

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This is the infrastructure
as we see it about now.

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This is what's planned for 2015.

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And you can see here
the Keystone Pipeline,

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which would take tar sands raw
down to the Gulf Coast,

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punching a pipeline through
the agricultural heart of North America,

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of the United States,

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and securing the contract
with the dirtiest fuel in the world

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by consumption of the United States,

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and promoting a huge disincentive

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to a sustainable clean-energy
future for America.

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Here you see the route
down the Mackenzie valley.

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This would put a pipeline
to take natural gas from the Beaufort Sea

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through the heart of the third largest
watershed basin in the world,

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and the only one
which is 95 percent intact.

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And building a pipeline
with an industrial highway

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would change forever
this incredible wilderness,

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which is a true rarity
on the planet today.

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So the Great Bear Rainforest
is just over the hill there,

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within a few miles,
we go from these dry boreal forests

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of 100-year-old trees,
maybe 10 inches across,

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and soon, we're in the coastal
temperate rainforest,

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rain-drenched, 1,000-year-old trees,

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20 feet across, a completely
different ecosystem.

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And the Great Bear Rainforest
is generally considered to be

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the largest coastal temperate rainforest
ecosystem in the world.

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Some of the greatest densities

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of some of the most iconic
and threatened species on the planet.

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And yet there's a proposal,
of course, to build a pipeline

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to take huge tankers,
10 times the size of the Exxon Valdez,

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through some of the most
difficult-to-navigate waters in the world,

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where only just a few years ago,
a BC ferry ran aground.

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When one of these tar sands tankers,

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carrying the dirtiest oil,
10 times as much as the Exxon Valdez,

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eventually hits a rock and goes down,

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we're going to have
one of the worst ecological disasters

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this planet has ever seen.

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And here we have the plan out to 2030.

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What they're proposing is an almost
four-times increase in production,

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and that would industrialize
an area the size of Florida.

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In doing so, we'll be removing
a large part of our greatest carbon sink

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and replacing it with the most high
greenhouse-gas emission oil in the future.

00:14:52.581 --> 00:14:55.653
The world does not need
any more tar mines.

00:14:56.697 --> 00:14:59.637
The world does not need any more pipelines

00:14:59.661 --> 00:15:02.248
to wed our addiction to fossil fuels.

00:15:02.841 --> 00:15:04.833
And the world certainly does not need

00:15:04.857 --> 00:15:07.910
the largest toxic impoundments
to grow and multiply

00:15:07.934 --> 00:15:10.187
and further threaten
the downstream communities.

00:15:10.211 --> 00:15:12.207
And let's face it, we all live downstream

00:15:12.231 --> 00:15:14.834
in an era of global warming
and climate change.

00:15:16.043 --> 00:15:18.801
What we need, is we all need to act

00:15:18.825 --> 00:15:23.497
to ensure that Canada respects
the massive amounts of freshwater

00:15:23.521 --> 00:15:25.165
that we hold in this country.

00:15:25.956 --> 00:15:28.281
We need to ensure
that these wetlands and forests

00:15:28.305 --> 00:15:31.587
that are our best and greatest
and most critical defense

00:15:31.611 --> 00:15:34.073
against global warming are protected,

00:15:34.097 --> 00:15:37.630
and we are not releasing
that carbon bomb into the atmosphere.

00:15:38.557 --> 00:15:43.688
And we need to all gather together
and say no to the tar sands.

00:15:43.712 --> 00:15:44.863
And we can do that.

00:15:44.887 --> 00:15:47.770
There is a huge network
all over the world,

00:15:47.794 --> 00:15:49.517
fighting to stop this project.

00:15:50.040 --> 00:15:51.834
And I quite simply think

00:15:51.858 --> 00:15:55.724
that this is not something
that should be decided just in Canada.

00:15:55.748 --> 00:15:58.028
Everyone in this room,
everyone across Canada,

00:15:58.052 --> 00:16:00.013
everyone listening to this presentation

00:16:00.037 --> 00:16:02.839
has a role to play
and, I think, a responsibility.

00:16:02.863 --> 00:16:08.498
Because what we do here
is going to change our history,

00:16:08.522 --> 00:16:11.215
it's going to color
our possibility to survive,

00:16:11.239 --> 00:16:14.630
and for our children to survive
and have a rich future.

00:16:16.749 --> 00:16:18.711
We have an incredible gift in the boreal,

00:16:18.735 --> 00:16:23.843
an incredible opportunity to preserve
our best defense against global warming,

00:16:23.987 --> 00:16:25.724
but we could let that slip away.

00:16:26.715 --> 00:16:30.400
The tar sands could threaten
not just a large section of the boreal.

00:16:30.717 --> 00:16:33.690
It compromises the life and the health

00:16:33.714 --> 00:16:38.238
of some of our most underprivileged
and vulnerable people,

00:16:38.262 --> 00:16:41.375
the aboriginal communities
that have so much to teach us.

00:16:42.131 --> 00:16:44.709
It could destroy the Athabasca Delta,

00:16:44.733 --> 00:16:48.574
the largest and possibly greatest
freshwater delta in the planet.

00:16:49.389 --> 00:16:52.958
It could destroy
the Great Bear Rainforest,

00:16:52.982 --> 00:16:55.375
the largest temperate
rainforest in the world.

00:16:55.817 --> 00:16:57.825
And it could have huge impacts

00:16:57.849 --> 00:17:01.810
on the future of the agricultural
heartland of North America.

00:17:02.337 --> 00:17:05.531
I hope that you will all,
if you've been moved by this presentation,

00:17:05.555 --> 00:17:08.334
join with the growing
international community

00:17:08.358 --> 00:17:11.804
to get Canada to step up
to its responsibilities,

00:17:11.828 --> 00:17:16.214
to convince Canada to go back
to being a climate change champion

00:17:16.238 --> 00:17:17.971
instead of a climate change villain,

00:17:17.994 --> 00:17:19.652
and to say no to the tar sands,

00:17:19.675 --> 00:17:22.345
and yes to a clean energy future for all.

00:17:22.368 --> 00:17:23.693
Thank you so much.

00:17:23.717 --> 00:17:26.804
(Applause)