In Depth: Fort Chipewyan

 

Fort Chipewyan

The isolated community of Fort Chipewyan, named after the First Nations who inhabited the area, was the first European settlement in Alberta in 1788. Sitting on the far northeastern tip of Alberta, this community of about 1,200, also known as "Ft. Chip," can only be reached by an ice road for a small portion of the year, or by boat or plane. Its isolation makes food expensive, and many in this community still rely on hunting, trapping, fishing and gathering throughout the year for their food.

But these days, many people in Fort Chipewyan say they can no longer trust the environment that has sustained them for so long. Their community is downstream from what is often referred to as largest industrial project on the planet – Alberta’s oilsands. And it shares shores with Saskatchewan’s Uranium City, which supplied the world with most of its enriched uranium for many years.

Over the past decade, residents of Fort Chipewyan say, they have watched too many people die from cancer and other illnesses. Many now suspect something in their water is slowly poisoning them. Hunters and trappers say they no longer dip their cups over their canoes to get a drink of water, and sales of expensive bottled water have increased.

Dr. John O'Connor

The community’s suspicions, which were based on anecdotal experience at that time, seemed to have been substantiated when Dr. John O’Connor, the community’s long time fly-in physician and the medical examiner for the region, spoke out publicly in March 2006 about seeing higher-than-expected rates of cancer and other diseases.

Since then, questions have lingered about whether O'Connor's concerns were scientifically supported. Nevertheless, Fort Chipewyan has made international headlines and its apparent health problems have become a key rallying point in campaigns being waged around the world by environmentalists against Alberta’s so-called "dirty oil."

After O’Connor spoke to CBC News in March 2006 about his observations, several other health professionals came forward with similar concerns, including the head nurse of Fort Chipewyan’s nursing station, Georg MacDonald, and Donna Cyprien, the director of Nunee Health, Fort Chipewyan’s Health Canada-funded health authority.

However, O’Connor and the other health professionals weren’t the first to sound the alarm about apparent health problems in this community. Dr. Michel Sauvé, an internist and president of the Fort McMurray Medical Association, had raised similar concerns three years earlier during  government licensing hearings for two oilsands operations: Shell Oil and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. 

Recommendations for a health study

In both cases, the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board  (now the Energy Resource Conservation Board or ERCB) recommended a study of the health of residents living in the oilsands region. Shell Oil also promised to complete a human health baseline assessment, which First Nations say was never completed.

Prior to that, the Northern River Basins Monitoring Program, a provincial panel studying water issues in northern Alberta, had suggested baseline health studies should be done of northern aboriginal communities, after panel members became concerned about reports of elevated health problems. 

After O’Connor’s claims received national media attention in March 2006, Health Canada and Alberta Health and Wellness pledged to do a thorough study of health problems in Fort Chipewyan. Alberta’s health minister at the time, Iris Evans, pledged to do whatever was necessary to alleviate the community’s fears and address the concerns of area doctors and nurses.

Officials said it would take up to a full year to do a thorough study, and they promised to include the community and its doctor in the planning of any study.

Surprise release

Just a few months after those promises were made, Alberta Health and Wellness surprised the community, health professionals and the media when, on July 14, 2006, it suddenly released a health analysis of Fort Chipewyan residents at a licensing hearing for another oilsands company, Suncor.

The company was requesting government approval for its Voyageur upgrader and mine expansion, which was opposed by residents of Fort Chipewyan and members of the area’s tribal council. The residents were asking the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board (now the ERCB) to stall the project until a health study could be completed.

Alberta Health and Wellness’ response was to table its analysis, which was based on a search of a provincial billing database and a cancer registry database.

The analysis showed overall cancer rates in Fort Chipewyan were no higher than the rest of the province. It also did not find the three to five cases in 100,000 of cholangiocarcinoma, a rare bile-duct cancer reported by O’Connor, which normally strikes one to two people.

However, the analysis did show elevated cases of two diseases O’Connor was concerned about: Graves (a type of autoimmune disease that causes over-activity of the thyroid gland, causing hyperthyroidism) and kidney (renal) failure. It also showed specific cancers were elevated, including cancers of the blood known as hematopoietics, which oncologists say includes leukemia.

For reasons unknown, the Alberta Cancer Board decided to separate leukemia from hematopoietics for the analysis. Once the figures were combined, blood cancers were double the expected rate (five expected, 10 diagnosed). Nevertheless, Alberta Health determined this was not a statistically significant difference and said there was no cause for concern, and repeatedly said there was no need for further study of Fort Chipewyan..

Incomplete data used

O’Connor immediately called the study rushed and incomplete, and criticized it for failing to include data more recent than the 1995-2005 statistics it was based on.

The lead investigator for the cancer board, Dr. Yiqun Chen, did admit to using incomplete data even for the years included in the analysis because of limitations in the cancer database. She also said a review of medical charts from Fort Chipewyan’s nursing station wasn’t completed for the analysis — something that had been promised to the community.

Members of the Fort Chipewyan and medical communities immediately called for a more thorough study to be done, including an analysis of blood and tissue samples from the community and a close examination of medical charts.

However, the Alberta and federal governments stood by their analysis despite criticism of the methodology from area doctors, and maintained the analysis showed overall cancer rates are not elevated. They said media sensationalism was the only reason there was concern for this community.

Dangerous arsenic

In November 2006, residents discovered a Suncor Energy study predicted via modelling, that arsenic levels in moose meat and other food sources used by the residents in Fort Chipewyan are up to 453 time acceptable limits in terms of cancer risk.

Despite these alarming findings, Fort Chipewyan’s community leaders said they had to send numerous letters to the provincial government demanding further study before Alberta Health and Wellness agreed to investigate arsenic levels in the area. A spokesperson for Alberta’s health minister, Howard May, denied those claims and said a study of the arsenic levels had been initiated as soon as the Suncor report became public.

Alberta Health completed its study in March 2007, concluding arsenic levels were much lower in the area than had been reported previously. The new analysis, published in March 2007, found arsenic levels were only 17 - 30 times the acceptable levels, and found they were no higher than samples taken from another northern community.

Given the dramatically conflicting findings, the people in Fort Chipewyan asked for a more comprehensive, independent and peer-reviewed analysis. The Alberta government has not responded to the request.

Official complaint

In March 2007, senior medical officials at Health Canada used the Alberta Health analysis as the basis for a complaint against O’Connor, accusing the physician of causing undue alarm in Fort Chipewyan and causing mistrust of government. They filed the complaint with the Alberta College of Physicians and Surgeons, which began an investigation.

College rules prevented O’Connor from talking publicly about the probe, but when news of the complaint surfaced, members of the community and fellow doctors rallied around him, suggesting it was an attempt to muzzle the outspoken physician. Members of the Alberta Medical Association (March 2007) and The Canadian Medical Association (September 2007) passed motions supporting a doctor’s right to speak out publicly about concerns for his patients.

About six months after the complaint was filed, the investigator looking into the complaint decided there was no foundation for the allegations against O’Connor. However, the college’s registrar, Trevor Theman, decided further investigation was needed and overruled the decision. Two years later, the college still hasn’t ruled on the allegations.

Doctor leaves town

After his son was violently robbed on the streets of Fort McMurray, in 2007 O’Connor decided to move back to the East Coast where he had started his practice in Canada.

Dr. Michel Sauvé again took up the cause of Fort Chipewyan. Sauvé, an internal medicine specialist and then president of the Fort McMurray Medical Association, called for a thorough examination of toxins in the blood and tissue of area residents. But politicians continued to say there was no cause for concern in the community.

However, the government did agree to initiate a province-wide examination for toxins in blood samples taken from pregnant women for toxins. The scientist in charge of that examination said the sample size being taken from Fort Chipewyan was too small to produce specific results for the community. The government still has not released the results that were promised in the fall of 2007.

Community activism

With the continued refusal by federal and provincial governments to undertake a comprehensive study, residents in Fort Chipewyan demanded their community leaders conduct their own study.

New chiefs were elected in two of the area’s largest First Nations — Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation in 2007 and Roxanne Marcel of the Mikisew Cree in 2008 — along with numerous new council members with promises to do more about the health concerns.

The new leaders began working with local health authorities to commission studies of contaminants in Lake Athabasca.

The first of these was the Nov.11, 2007 Timoney Report, written by independent ecologist and statistician Kevin Timoney.

Study finds cause for concern

Timoney’s analysis found numerous deficiencies in the industry-funded and operated monitoring of water quality in the oilsands region.

"We found that there is reason to be concerned that levels of arsenic, mercury and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are higher than would be considered safe," Timoney told CBC News. Timoney's analysis found these higher than expected sedimentary contaminants and some of the most toxic contaminants appeared to be rising with increased development.

Alberta Health Minister Dave Hancock, while admitting he had not read Timoney's report, said it contained nothing new and did not give him any reason to be concerned for the health of people drinking the area's water. Officials with Alberta Environment’s oilsands division also said there was little connection between contaminants found in the sediment of the lake where the residents get their water, and the safety of their drinking water.

Those officials also said any sedimentary contaminants are naturally occurring because the area is rich in petroleum.

However, at the same time, federal officials responsible for the quality of Fort Chipewyan’s drinking water admitted to CBC News that they do not test – and had never tested – the settlement’s water for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), the petroleum-based contaminants Timoney found in lake sediment that, according to his report, are linked to cancers and other illnesses.

Following a November 2007 report it commissioned, Suncor admitted that one of its oldest tailings ponds, the Tar Island dike, had been leaking millions of litres of wastewater daily into the groundwater, which flows into the Athabasca River. Tailings ponds are lake-sized bodies of toxic wastewater from oilsands operations. They hold the waste left over after the oil is washed out of the oily sand. The industry’s tailings ponds currently cover 130 square kilometres.

In May 2008, members of Alberta’s Liberal opposition questioned why Suncor had never been fined for this admitted leak. The province replied that water quality in the area of the leak was being closely monitored by the industry-funded Regional Aquatic Monitoring Program, and any toxins from the tailings pond were highly diluted and not of any concern.

A May 2008 report by the Polaris Institute, an Ontario-based safe water advocacy group,  added fuel to the controversy: It found the water quality in Fort Chipewyan was among the worst in Canada.

Cancer board launches new investigation

With a growing number of local, national and international media outlets and non-governmental organizations calling for further study of Fort Chipewyan’s water, the provincial Department of Health and Wellness decided to re-analyze the area’s cancer rate. The Alberta Cancer Board’s (now the Alberta Health Services Board) spokesperson and director of media relations, Lee Elliot, told CBC News and other media outlets the study would be comprehensive and researchers would involve the community and local health officials.

Elliot told CBC reporter Erik Denison that researchers would take steps to ensure their data were accurate, including talking with elders who have kept lists of deaths in the community. Community members in Fort Chipewyan have long said staffing shortages, turnover and poorly trained nurses have led to incomplete record-keeping in the community’s small nursing station.

Elliot refused to release to the media a copy of the research protocol being used for this analysis, despite a joint request by reporters from Alberta’s four major media organizations: CBC News, Canwest Global, Sun Media Corp. and The Canadian Press.

Elliot also told CBC News the study would follow the American Centre For Disease Control cancer cluster protocol.

However, CBC News obtained the application for the new analysis, which contained an outline of the researchers’ plans. It showed the new analysis would be limited to a chart review and a review of a provincial cancer database. It also showed Elliot, the provincial cancer board’s media relations director, would be a co-investigator on the new analysis.

Community rejects study

On Nov. 10, 2008, before the study was even completed, Fort Chipewyan First Nations’ leaders and their health authority, the Nunee Health Region, rejected the cancer board’s analysis.

They said the board had not fulfilled its promise to involve them in the study’s design, and had failed to consult with them about its progress. The chair of the Nunee Health Board, which is responsible for health in the community on behalf of Health Canada, said he had only been invited to two meetings: The first in February 2008 to introduce the researchers who would conduct the study, the other in August 2008 to inform the community that the study had been completed.

Doctors who treat the community also said they were not closely involved with research, to ensure cancer cases were not being missed. Liam Griffin, Fort Chipewyan’s fly-in physician, said his involvement was limited to an invitation to attend two community meetings with residents and leaders. He attended one but, due to a schedule conflict, could not attend the other.

Griffin said he was sent a list of people who had died in the community and was asked to verify whether it was accurate. Given his limited time in the community, he said, he found that task difficult.

O’Connor, the community’s doctor between 2000 and 2007, said the researchers had not consulted him about cancer cases in the community.

Sauvé, then president of the Fort McMurray Medical Association, which represents doctors that treat patients from Fort Chipewyan, said the researchers did not consult him, and said none of his members had told him they had been consulted.

Sauvé was also critical of the provincial cancer board’s outline for its research. He said the board’s new analysis appeared to exclude a significant number of suspected cancer cases because it would only look at lab-confirmed diagnoses, which are part of the Alberta Cancer Registry. He said doctors in remote communities such as Fort Chipewyan often do not fly patients out for confirmation via biopsies if the cancer is advanced and the diagnosis does not require lab confirmation. As well, Sauvé added, many First Nations family members are reluctant to allow autopsies for cultural reasons.

Despite the criticism of the government study, it did find that the overall cancer rate in the community is 30 per cent higher than it should be. The Alberta government has said it can not explain the high rate, and says it will monitor cancer in the community more closely.

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