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Mega projects, massive developments and international events are bringing vast changes across B.C. and Alberta. For the past few years, oil and the 2010 Olympics have been the primary drivers of Western Canada’s economy. Alberta’s Athabasca Tar Sands have been attracting lots of local and international attention, given that they are the world’s largest energy project and the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world.
The tar sands house 173 billion barrels of recoverable bitumen and span an area the size of Florida. Calgary-based journalist Andrew Nikiforuk, in his book Tar Sands, writes that, “The tar sands produce over 40 million tons of greenhouse gases per year — more than the entire country of New Zealand.”
There are many stark similarities between Canada’s largest oil project and North America’s leading ski resort. While Whistler’s economy is driven by winter snow conditions and tourism, Fort “McMoney” is powered exclusively by the price of crude oil. Whistler has its superpipes and the terrain parks, while Fort McMurray has its super oil pipelines, CAT loaders and upgraders. Whistler’s top properties boast ski-in, ski-out access, while oil employees base their shifts around the fly-in, fly-out approach often associated with boom-and-bust economies.
Both towns seem to attract pioneers, risk-seekers and transients and it appears that many workers have sacrificed parts of their lives to follow their dreams. Seasonal workers flock to Whistler to work for low wages to experience the ski-bum lifestyle, while oil workers in Fort McMurray endure dismal living conditions in Canada’s “Mordor” (the land of darkness in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings) to earn exorbitant wages. Canada’s tar patch is undisputedly home to the Wild West of the global oil frontier and a new breed of climate change outlaws.
“Our town is built on ‘big spirit’ and attracts people who want to achieve big things,” said Melissa Blake, Fort McMurray’s dynamic two-term mayor, who has lived in town since 1982.
It’s worth noting that the mayor used the term oil sands — the term used by those in the industry, while environmentalists are now using the term “tar sands.”
Despite their successes, both towns have endured their share of economic ebb and flow. Whistler’s tourism bounced back after the tough 2002-’03 season sparked by SARS, 9/11, the looming war in Iraq and unfavourable weather. Similarly, Fort McMurray has survived the volatility of the oil industry.
Cost of Success
Known as Alberta’s “Northern Light,” Fort McMurray has witnessed a seven-year economic boom because of its abundant oil resources, while Whistler has experienced some 2.1 million tourists annually. Success has not come without its consequences, though.
Both towns have experienced skyrocketing infrastructure project costs, labour shortages, environmental degradation and unaffordable housing. Fort Mac has also the added issues of worker health/safety, escalating cancer rates, increases in the rates of spousal abuse and suicide and doctor shortages, combined with overpaid workers in their 20s who often spend like drunken sailors.
The mayors from both towns agree that their communities are feeling the impacts associated with economic growth.
“With the price of success comes an increased quality of life, but there are also costs that are hard to manage, such as affordable housing,” said Whistler’s mayor, Ken Melamed. “Affordability is a constant issue.”
Blake expressed concern that the media tends to focus solely on the town’s drug, gambling and prostitution issues. She pointed out that her community is vibrant and caring, with many long-term residents who donate a significant amount of time and money to fundraising and volunteerism. Despite the challenges, the mayor painted an optimistic and proud picture of her town.
The Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo was formed in 1995 and encompasses Fort McMurray, the five Treaty 8 First Nations reserves and the six Métis communities. Although the municipality encompasses more than 68,000 square kilometres, it’s still considered “land poor” since the bulk of the area is provincially owned Crown land that’s been leased to private oil companies.
“If I could do things differently, I would have secured more land to make things more affordable,” said Blake. “It will be near to impossible for us to expand because we’re land-locked and the cost to build is very high.”
Fort McMurray saw its population jump by 16.2 per cent from 2006 to 2007, to 89,167. This number does not include the approximately 30,000 “shadow population,” comprised of those who reside in rural work camps or live in tents along the Athabasca River — one of the few places where some “working poor” earn around $30 an hour.
Despite their similarities, Whistler and Fort McMurray have used distinct approaches to managing their growth.
“Whistler’s had a moratorium on growth for over 18 years,” Melamed said. “We’ve put mechanisms into place that have allowed us to transition from a boom cycle into a period of static growth with a different economic model.”
Whistler’s decision-makers have worked hard to avoid the housing issues that plague Fort McMurray. The Whistler Housing Authority’s mandate is to house 75 per cent of the town’s workforce within municipal boundaries. As Whistler moves toward the future and faces global challenges such as climate change, it has implemented sustainable growth mechanisms such as The Natural Step and Whistler 2020, its comprehensive sustainability plan.
“We never intended to marginalize our staff or make the housing feel like a ghetto. Work camps, like those in Fort Mac, are not conducive to maintaining community character,” said Melamed. “We believe that happy and respected staff deliver the best service.
“Whistler’s affordable housing has been integrated into the wealthier, market homes and uses high design guidelines. It’s taken us a few years to get comfortable with the formulas to fully integrate a non-market housing solution into a market-based one.”
A few weeks ago, Whistler Council granted a development permit to a temporary housing project (formerly called Phoenix) that promises provide 300 short-term beds for the Olympic Games. The agreement includes a fixed sunset clause that ensures that the modular units are temporary and will be removed after the Olympics. By comparison, Melamed said that one of the wins from hosting the 2010 Games has been the 300 acres of Crown land donated by the Province of B.C. for the Whistler athletes village.
Unfortunately, Fort McMurray has resorted to short-term housing solutions like the temporary Atco trailers lined up next to the Syncrude and Suncor refineries. Ironically, Fort McMurray is being considered as one of the recipients of one or more of the 10 pre-fabricated buildings to be used as temporary housing in Whistler.
Wood Buffalo also conducts a yearly census to monitor and record its growth.
The focus is starting to shift, slowly. In 2007, the Alberta government announced the opening of two new affordable rental projects in Fort McMurray that will provide 196 new units, a welcome step in the fight against extraordinary housing costs.
Like Whistler, Fort Mac’s sewage system wasn’t built to accommodate the large influx of visitors. The town’s sewage plant is being upgraded to accommodate up to 85,000 residents, but might not be enough since Fort Mac’s population is expected to surpass 100,000 in the next three years.
Both towns have bent the rules to accommodate key “business partners.” Whistler officials have faced demands from Fortress/Intrawest, VANOC and the provincial government, while Fort McMurray has had oil giants Exxon, Petro Canada, Shell and Statoil knocking on its door. Interestingly enough, while Fort McMurray has more than $220 billion in new investments, it still lacks a news bureau.
“The Olympics is one of the pressures that’s resulted from our success,” Melamed said. “But Whistler is rather unique because we already have defined policies on growth and affordability in place, and these have been effective in developing a respectful relationship with external and rather powerful partnerships. Developing strong policy has served Whistler well, as it’s met with the pressures of its evolving situation.”
Both Whistler and Vancouver are competing for the same workers needed to fuel the tar sands. The Inter Press Service reported earlier this year that “Western Canada's construction boom, spurred on by the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver and oil sands development in Alberta, has led to a massive increase in foreign temporary workers coming to the region.”
Added Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, “The tar sands are not an energy boom, but rather a construction boom. Between 2007-’08, the tar sands employed 160,000 construction workers. Twenty to 30 years of steady employment has now turned into five to seven years of frenzied development, where foreign workers are used as disposables.”
The Environment
As one drives by the Syncrude refineries, it’s hard not to be overcome with the burning tar smells, steam rising from the ground and toxic tailings leaching into the Athabasca River. Natural Resources Canada reports that the monumental Syncrude Tailings Dam is second in size only to China’s Three Gorges Dam. Earlier this year, 500 ducks died after landing in a toxic tailings pond.
The Dogwood Initiative released a report last year that stated, “The environment has been sacrificed to capitalize on the temporary economic gains of a world near peak oil production.”
Workers in northern Alberta are instructed to remove the “overburden” (a.k.a. boreal forest) that covers the underlying oil. The tar sands are already the cause of the second fastest rate of deforestation on the planet, trailing only the Amazon Rainforest Basin.
This summer, Whistler lost one of its last remaining wetlands so that B.C. Transit could build a new transit facility and fuelling station for the Hydrogen Highway that will be showcased during the “green” Olympic Games.
“It’s taken us a long time as a society to realize that this environment cannot continue to give with no expense attached to it,” Melamed said. “There has been a great deal of habitat destruction and Whistler has already lost 72 per cent of its wetlands. It’s taken many years to raise Whistler’s environmental consciousness and to become embedded as strong policy.”
Environmentalists worldwide are calling for a moratorium on all tar sands project approvals, until government and industry can assess the damage caused by development and discover strategies for redress. Cancer rates have been rising for the past decade in the downstream community of Fort Chipewyan, but critics say the Alberta government still dismisses their concerns.
While Blake supports the work of environmental groups, she does not support a moratorium. She wants to see the infrastructure in place to accommodate and house new workers. The municipality recently hired an economic development officer to look at developing a new strategy to diversify the economy, with less emphasis on the tar sands.
The Future
The global economic meltdown continues to affect oil companies and 2010 Olympic organizers. With oil prices having recently dipped below $50 U.S. a barrel, work in the tar sands has come to a virtual standstill.
“Economics changes everything,” Blake said. “Projects are slowing down due to the U.S. downturn. Suncor is scaling back on its Voyageur project.”
The decline has prompted other producers such as Petro-Canada, Suncor and Royal Dutch Shell to postpone billions of dollars worth of new or expansion projects. Last month, Johnson and Johnson, which had been an international Olympic sponsor, pulled out, following earlier departures by Lenovo, Kodak and Manulife.
“Whistler is not unique and will be affected by external forces like tourism and travel,” Melamed said. “The best protection is to establish a unique brand and a quality of service and value that is hard to compete with.”
Oil producers are worried that the Obama administration’s plans to shift the U.S. away from carbon-intensive fossil fuels will make it more difficult to sell what Obama has called “dirty oil” from Alberta to the U.S.
Either way, it will be interesting to see how Whistler weathers the 2010 Olympics and how Fort McMurray deals with peak oil and the global move towards more renewable energy sources.
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