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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 172

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 23, 2023 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 172 - Mar/23/23
Mr. Blake Desjarlais (Edmonton Griesbach, NDP)
  • Mar/23/23 12:35:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for bringing up the condition of orphaned wells across the country, particularly in my home province of Alberta. It is no secret these orphaned wells, some of them dating back many decades, are a huge pollutant. Indigenous communities are the communities that are the most impacted by these sites. I grew up in an area in northeast Alberta just north of the Cold Lake oil sands, and this location has one of the largest numbers of abandoned and orphaned wells. It has been known by the government, ever since the first orphaned well happened, that these sites would need remediation. Why did the government not take action to ensure the companies put aside money to ensure these projects would actually be remediated in a proper way? Why did our environmental laws allow for these kinds of projects and not have the enforcement necessary to hold these companies accountable? I agree that today taxpayers are stuck, unfortunately, with the problem, which years of delay, mismanagement and ignoring the oil sector's misdealing have presented. Why not ensure the corporations, moving forward, are actually held to account to put the resources aside to clean them up themselves?
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Context: House Hansard - 172 - Mar/23/23
Mr. Mark Gerretsen
  • Mar/23/23 12:36:28 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, that is an absolutely excellent question, and I wish I knew the answer to it, but I do not. I was in municipal government before coming here, and the minute we built a brand new building, we had already started building a reserve fund to deal with the challenges the building would face years and decades down the road. If one goes into a municipality and wants to build a new building, they have to give the municipality a deposit on the site plan. If they do not deliver on the site plan, the municipality can come in and pay for it. Why on earth that was not set up for oil wells, I do not know. I can respect the fact that the times must have been different then. I do not know what the circumstances were like, but in hindsight, it was just not the right thing to do by all the previous governments that dealt with this.
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