Syncrude oil sands mine and upgrader, photo via The Pembina Institute

If Canadians do not believe this, we are accepting that the landscape and ecosystem services of more than 140,000 square kilometres of north-eastern Alberta may be irrevocably altered by mining for sandy oil.

How does open-pit oil sands development occur? To recover reticent oil, overlying boreal forests and wetlands are cleared, surface soils dewatered and removed, and proximal rivers and streams diverted. Exposed oil sands ore, 40-60 metres thick, is typically 83% sand, 4% water, 3% clay and 10% bitumen. Refining of the ore requires significant off-site processing to separate bitumen from sand particles. An elephantine amount of ore—approximately 2,000 kilograms—is removed to produce one barrel of oil, changing boreal forests to Burtynsky-scale mined landscapes in the process.

In March 2008, Syncrude reclaimed 104 acres of its oil sands site. Trumpeted by oil and gas companies as proof of ecologically sound operations, the Gateway Hill area is the first to be certified by Alberta's government as acceptably restored.

The former wetland, used as a dump for non-toxic soil overlying the oil sands, is now an upland forest. This new environment will never support equivalent wildlife or provide similar ecosystem services. Moreover, this ‘successful’ restoration represents a mere 0.2 per cent of the total land affected by oil sands mining since 1966. Restoring wetlands and bogs, toxic tailings ponds, and mined areas to their actual initial states has never been done.

While local communities are paying for oil sands operations with their health—residents, many Aboriginal, of the Athabasca region have elevated rates of cancer and immune disease—Canadian taxpayers may end up bearing the long-term costs of environmental remediation. Since the price of restoring complex boreal ecosystems is unknown and true reclamation remains unproven, security deposits collected by the Alberta government from oil sands operators cannot adequately protect taxpayers from liability for future remediation.

The Sydney, NS Tar Ponds provide a cautioning example of taxpayer liability for site restoration. A formerly prosperous industrial city, by-products from steel production have left Sydney with Canada’s most contaminated soil and a legacy of related illnesses. Full remediation of the tar ponds, a 32-hectare site, is ongoing and will cost provincial and federal taxpayers a minimum of $500-800 million.