Thank you for inviting me today as a witness. I'm joined by Dr. Jane McArthur, CAPE's toxics program director.

I'm a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, a community downstream from the Athabasca tar sands, and I'd like to acknowledge my presence on my homeland, Denendeh, and Treaty 8 territory. I have a background in nursing, and I represented my own first nation as a lawyer to protect our homelands from environmental degradation caused by tar sands development. Today, I am here to speak about why we need to strengthen CEPA.

Being downstream from one of the largest industrial projects in the world has shaped who I am as a person. CEPA has been in existence since I was a child, but despite its being our primary environmental legislation, I have witnessed its failures to protect our homelands and our people. Indigenous communities have been unfairly burdened with a devastating legacy of toxic chemicals that pose a threat to our health and well-being.

I am haunted by the giant unlined tailings dams located beside the Athabasca River that house toxic compounds from the tar sands industry, which we have long suspected to be leaching into the river. There has not been a day in my adult life where I have not considered what will happen when one of them—or both of them—finally breaches and contaminates one of my life bloods, which is already experiencing critically low levels from massive industrial water withdrawals.

The change of season is a significant time to our people, and spring marks a time of renewal and rebirth. This season officially begins when the snow melts and the river breaks up, but instead of celebrating, I experience overwhelming anxiety because it also marks the beginning of our annual oil spill that industry creates through its release of toxic emissions that accumulate in the snow during the winter months and run off into the river when it melts. Our spring rainfall once represented a time of sacred cleansing, but now, due to climate change, we experience floods, and I cannot help but think, “Is this going to be the one that causes the tailings dams to breach?”

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