Globe Climate: We went to Peruvian oil country to see the lack of Canadian corporate oversight

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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.

We’ll start with something cool: The largest-ever genetic assessment of the woolly mammoth has yielded new insight into this elephant cousin. The study shows how genetic adaptations evolved. For example, mammoths evolved ever-fluffier fur and ever-smaller ears over time. While the researchers are not involved in trying to resurrect the mammoth through cloning, their work could assist any such effort. Interesting?!

Now, let’s catch you up on other news.

Noteworthy reporting this week:

1. First their homes flooded, then interest rates soared: After the devastating 2021 floods in B.C. ravaged their homes, homeowners have struggled against the rising tide of pricier debt
2. Climate emergency: Heavy rains arrive in drought-stricken Somalia, flooding homes of thousands on the brink of famine
3. Oil and gas: B.C. LNG project approvals prompt a reckoning of clean energy supply
4. Film review: Electric and gripping, eco-thriller How to Blow Up a Pipeline is a fast and tight cinematic provocation
5. Policy: Ottawa has yet to pay carbon-pricing rebates to small businesses, but says they’re coming
6. Weather: A storm that hit Quebec and Ontario last week has left many people still trying to get power back. Over the Easter weekend workers continued to try to restore hydro. At least three people have are reported dead, and communities came together during the holidays to support each other.
7. Teck Resources: ‘Canada is not for sale’, says Keevil family after Glencore’s impromptu offer. Now, a Canadian group led by Pierre Lassonde has launched a plan to protect Teck’s coal spin-off from foreign takeover
8. In-depth with The Narwhal: $1.2B later, Teck Resources has barely put a dent in its pollution problems, documents show

A deeper dive

Hollow core: About the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise

Tavia Grant works on The Globe and Mail’s investigative team. For this week’s deeper dive, she talks about her travels to Peru where she went to learn about abuses by multinationals and the effects of missing Canadian oversight.

It is mid-December and we have spent several days in Peru’s Amazon region, part of the world’s largest rainforest, where the apu – or community leader – and the environmental monitor have shown us sites of lingering oil contamination in their territory.

It is the end of a hard day of walking in searing heat, along jungle paths to lagoons and through creeks, and abandoned oil facilities, travelling by pickup on remote dirt roads near the border with Ecuador. Back in the community, standing outside his home, the apu gives us a message to take home to Canada.

“You yourself have seen it. Today we have walked quite a long, difficult walk, Miss Journalist, and now I hope you take it into account,” he says. For years, companies have extracted oil, he says, but failed to fix the environmental damage they caused. He hopes the government of Canada will force the Canadian firm, Frontera Energy, the last one to operate in the area, to clean up. (Frontera has said it is “honouring its contractual commitments and will continue to comply with its outstanding social and environmental obligations.”)

Canadian companies have operations in many remote regions of the world – but what happens if some run roughshod over human rights and the environment? Where is the oversight?

For years, I have been curious about what mechanisms, if any, are available to people, especially those who dwell in remote areas where valuable minerals and gas are plentiful, who have been negatively affected by Canadian companies’ activities.

It turns out, in 2018, Canada announced the creation of an office that would address precisely these concerns. It was to be the first of its kind in the world: the Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise would investigate allegations of human-rights violations by Canadian firms operating abroad.

The reality, five years later, is altogether different from the original promises from the Liberal federal government. It doesn’t have investigatory powers, such as the ability to compel documents from companies. It hasn’t completed a single review or investigation – despite there being dozens of current conflicts or concerns over companies’ activities. Some of these, involving contamination of land and water, have been well documented by local authorities.

For now, remote villagers and Indigenous peoples still face challenges in drawing attention to their concerns and holding companies to account. I hope, with this and future coverage, to shine a light on their experiences and show what’s at stake when oversight is missing.

- Tavia

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What else you missed

• How a plan to limit private car traffic in Oxford led to death threats, conspiracy theories
• Alberta government waited a month to declare emergency response to oil sands releases, document shows
• More than 40 per cent of Canadian farm operators to retire by 2033, report says
• Canadian miner Brazil Potash presses on with sensitive project in Amazon rain forest
• Energy executives say Ottawa must make good on pledge to speed up project approvals
• Gitxaala First Nation in B.C. goes to court over automatic mineral rights
• David Suzuki shares insights as he retires from The Nature of Things
• Methane big part of ‘alarming’ rise in planet-warming gases
• Canada can play a big role in addressing growing food insecurity, Nutrien CEO says
• Climate change activists glue themselves to road to Alpine tunnel in Switzerland
• India avalanche kills seven near Himalayan pass to Tibet

Opinion and analysis

Deborah Yedlin: In Houston, oil executives survey a changing industry and a brave new world

Andrew Coyne: No, that PBO study doesn’t prove the carbon tax is a stealth cash grab

The Editorial Board: How an LNG plant was approved under the ‘no more pipelines’ act

The Editorial Board: Canada’s carbon tax conversation is full of hot air

Konrad Yakabuski: A lack of political guts leaves Canada on the sidelines amid global LNG boom

Green Investing

RBC boss defends financing strategy related to climate change

Royal Bank of Canada chief executive Dave McKay said that the country is at a “critical moment” on climate change as investors and Indigenous groups criticize the bank’s continued lending for fossil-fuel projects, including projects such as the Coastal GasLink pipeline. Earlier in the week, he had said that Canada’s largest lender can make the greatest impact by partnering with clients to advise on reducing emissions, rather than ceasing the financing of those projects altogether.

• Investors join activists in pressing TotalEnergies on climate targets
• Coal capacity climbs worldwide despite promises to slash it

Making waves

Each week The Globe will profile a Canadian making a difference. This week we’re highlighting the work of Marlene Hale merging activism and education.

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My name is Marlene Hale, and I am from the Wet’suwet’en Nation, born in Smithers, B.C. I am a First Nations chef, living in Montreal, and have taught children all over Canada. When the Coastal GasLink (CGL) forced an injunction, I became a full time activist and filmmaker.

The pipeline is now over 80 per cent finished. But we’re still fighting. Where the pipeline is drilling on Wet’suwet’en territory, is going under the last untamed Wedzin Kwa River, which horrifically threatens the salmon migration, and feeds all of the Wet’suwet’en territory, already in peril.

I brought people together to break isolation through a weekly “Marlene Webinar’s Solidarity Action Group.” I am working full-time now on a film called Systemic Racism and I intend to share more about what is happening in my community and other communities facing unwanted pipelines and other polluting projects.

I am trying to educate and decolonize, starting with my own Nation. I continue to mentor youth activists, which I call my “trouble makers.” For they are the eighth generation, they are dealing with climate crisis, leading to eco crisis and then climate trauma. It is becoming an increasing problem leading to suicide.

I want to help others understand the crises we face and effective ways of tackling them. I aim to empower people to challenge colonial practices and systemic racism.

- Marlene

Do you know an engaged individual? Someone who represents the real engines pursuing change in the country? Email us at GlobeClimate@globeandmail.com to tell us about them.

Photo of the week

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Guides and Explainers

• Want to learn to invest sustainably? We have a class for that: Green Investing 101 newsletter course for the climate-conscious investor. Not sure you need help? Take our quiz to challenge your knowledge.
• We’ve rounded up our reporters’ content to help you learn about what a carbon tax is and just generally how Canada will change because of climate change.
• We have ways to make your travelling more sustainable and if you like to read, here are books to help the environmentalist in you grow, as well as a downloadable e-book of Micro Skills - Little Steps to Big Change.

Catch up on Globe Climate

• Do we need a moratorium to save the mackerel population?
• This is the most consequential budget for climate in years. Here’s what to watch
• The final IPCC report looks dire, but there are bright spots
• What is the UN ‘High Seas Treaty’ really about?

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