The province of Alberta and Canadian federal governments have unveiled the Joint Canada-Alberta Implementation Plan for Oil Sands Monitoring, a plan to increase water, air, land and biodiversity monitoring of the country’s oil sands regions. In a statement released by Environment Canada, the plan is said to provide an improved understanding of the cumulative long-term effects of development of oil sands.
Set to begin this spring, the three-year implementation plan will start with increased sampling frequency, parameters and locations and will integrate relevant parts of existing monitoring efforts to give the industry and government the necessary scientific foundation to continue to promote the environmentally sustainable development of oil sands.
Peter Kent, Canadian Environment Minister, said that the program would be one of the most transparent and accountable oil sands monitoring systems in the world and that the country is challenging other in the international oil producing community to match Canada’s environmental monitoring commitment. The program will be jointly managed by the Canadian and Alberta governments. For the first three years annual progress reports will be prepared and an external peer review of the program will be conducted at the end of the third year. A full external scientific review will be conducted every five years.
Both governments are committing significant resources into environmental monitoring and the energy industry is expected to provide funding to implement the program as well.