East Slopes' Protection and Restoration

Season 2, Episode 8 features a discussion with Mike Judd, Allan Garbutt, and Colin Smith, who are long-time advocates for the region’s ecological preservation. The conversation highlights the detrimental impacts of industrial activities such as logging, oil and gas extraction, and coal mining on the Eastern Slopes, emphasizing the urgent need for legislative protection and sustainable land management practices. The speakers advocate for comprehensive wilderness protection, public hearings, and coalition-building among environmental groups to address these challenges. They stress the importance of enforcing existing environmental laws and engaging in strategic, community-led efforts to safeguard water resources and biodiversity for future generations. The podcast underscores the critical role of public awareness and political action in achieving meaningful environmental change.

Introductions to Mike Judd and Allan Garbutt, Plus Colin Smith Returns

Jenny (00:00:04):

Welcome to The Gravity Well Podcast. I am your host, Jenny Yeremiy. Here you break down heavy ideas with me to understand their complexities and connections. Our mission is to work through dilemmas together in conversation and process. I acknowledge that I live on the traditional Territory of Treaty 7 and Metis districts 5 and 6. The treaties and self-governance agreements established by indigenous peoples were created to honour the laws of the land, maintain balance with nature by giving back and uphold reciprocal relationships. This knowledge and intention are what guide The Gravity Well conversation. I ask for genuine dialogue, real hearts, and openness to different perspectives. This is your invitation to find common ground with me.

This podcast is dedicated to the natural world, our children, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, and all future generations. The gravity well is on YouTube and streaming wherever you get your podcasts. Join us thegravitywell.net. Okay, we are down in the Crowsnest Pass. No, we are in Beaver Mines just south of the Crowsnest Pass. I’ll let you explain it in a minute here. We’re at Mike Judd’s place here with Allan Garbutt and Colin Smith. Colin and I came down from Calgary, very excited for this conversation for two longstanding fighters for the Eastern Slopes. Thank you for all the work you guys have done. Why are we here? We’re here to talk about protection and restoration of the Eastern Slopes, the place where we live. Let’s start with some introductions. I think you know enough about me, but I’ll just a little for you just in case.

I’m a geophysicist. I worked in development. We were just talking offline about frac development and stuff, and I was involved in all of that and ignorant for a long time. And then became aware in about 2014 when oil prices fell out is when I first started to pay attention to liability. The impact we were having, the sites that we were leaving a bunch of water, trying to get rid of it and realizing this was a growing issue and not being maintained or not being looked after at the same pace that’s required. Anyway, that’s my background and how I came into this knowledge and awareness of this issue. Yeah. Why don’t you start? Please, Mike, can you introduce yourself and give us a bit of your background?

Mike:

Yeah. Well, my name is Mike Judd. I live here on the Eastern Slopes just west of Pincher Creek, near Little Hamlin, the Beaver Mines. And I live on the land that my mom and dad bought in 1946. It’s mostly forested land with the little bits of open meadow and has a wonderful elk range, and it’s a grizzly bear. I have a grizzly bear den on my land and another one that I know of close by. This is a very important landscape. If you get up on the hills here and look around, you can see the entire front of the Rocky Mountains and the beauty of it. And also what you’re bound to become aware of is the kind of industrial intrusions that are starting to happen on it.

Jenny:

Right? Yes. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. And you are the head of Timber?

Allan:

Timberwolf.

Mike:

Yeah, I am. I wouldn’t call myself the head, but I’m one of the members of Timberwolf Wilderness Society and what our society is about is trying to get protection for the Eastern Slopes in the form of legislation and to get beyond land use plans and other policies that are not working for us.

Jenny:

And I’d be remiss not to ask you to give us a little bit of info about how you protected the castle. We’re in the Castle Watershed right now, is that right?

Mike:

That’s correct. We’re in the Castle Watershed, and I would say that over the course of four decades starting in the 1970s, a group of us started talking about getting protection for The Castle and have been added until 2013, I think it is, when it was officially designated as a wildland park and provincial park. I think it’s something that Albertans should be really proud of the fact that we finally managed to acknowledge that wilderness is important and that we are going to have a showcase example of it now in the future.

Jenny:

It’s amazing. My husband was a forest firefighter and spent a lot of time in the castle. He was really stoked when, yeah, he was actually on the Christmas pass fire in Lost Creek.

Mike:

Creek fire.

Jenny:

Yeah. Wow. That’s right. That was his last season.

Mike:

Well, I could stand on that hill up there and watch those water bombers come over, and they weren’t more than 50 yards above us.

Jenny:

Amazing. Yeah, he was on that fire for over 30 days. It’s probably his biggest fire that he was involved in, but yeah, was super grateful when the castle was protected. Thank you for your work.

Mike:

Well, I’m only one of many people that worked on that project.

Jenny:

Well, thank you for your work, Alan, that leads to you. Please. Can you give us a bit of your background in this fight for protection of the Eastern Slopes and what you’re doing today?

Allan:

Well, I was raised in Calgary, but a much smaller Calgary. The number three bus turned around at the end of my schoolyard. Dad took us fishing in the old man Castle Livingston area, starting in about 1960. I’ve been in and out of that ever since, which I guess makes me really old. Got an undergrad degree in Edmonton in wildlife biology. Went down east for some graduate degrees, came back with a PhD, worked in wildlife and consulting in Edmonton for a few years, decided I couldn’t sell out any longer and went back to med school, became a rural family doc, did my last year of training in Fernie and then moved to Crowsnest Pass. I spent 26 years there. We’ve been living out on the porcupines for 25 years now. I’ve been retired for five years. I started working with Livingston Landowners more than a couple of decades ago when there were plants for high intensity drilling on our land. And then Alta Link for some reason thought that the easiest way to build a power line was over the roughest piece of country around. We thought we won. I retired, thinking I’d offer my help to the landowners. I knew about the coal mine. I had followed it and had actually read the EIA for which I must be commended and called stupid.

Realized that they didn’t know what the H they were doing. It was a horrible one. I used to write these things. I used to mark them on undergrads. Any undergrad who turned that in, I’d have just failed, sent ’em back. I started reading it at number eight. If I had been that bad at the end of number four when I was working, I’d have been fired. They went to number 12 and then they got fired. Wow. But I did a bunch of work on the health impacts of coal for the landowners. We all went away. I thought I was going to get to go back to being an apprentice rancher. My neighbours tell me that’s a 30 year job, I guess I’m going to have to work hard to graduate, and we just keep running into them. The east slopes are absolutely vital for the folks who don’t know them. Essentially, they’re the lumpy ground between the prairies or Parklands and the mountains In southern Alberta, there are maybe 20 kilometers wide in Northern Alberta. They are hundreds of kilometers wide, but those mountains provide the water that feeds the prairies. If we screw up the water, everybody from Manitoba West is in trouble, said this before, this is not a right left. This is a right, wrong,

And they’re wrong

Jenny:

And we can’t undo it. Right. If we make this mistake.

Allan:

No, this is a one shot.

Jenny:

Yes.

Allan:

If you destroy the water yield to the prairies, there is no way to go back and magically recreate the sponge that these slopes are. If you don’t have the sponge, you don’t have the water. Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer, Lethbridge, Regina, Saskatoon, they’re all toast.

Jenny:

Agreed. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you guys both so much for all of your work. Colin and I are late to this game, but we are happy to be here working with you guys. It’s a joy to be working with such tremendous people that are knowledgeable and willing to put their retirement towards helping this province stay together. Thank you. Colin, do you mind, were you introducing yourself? Colin’s been on the show a few times, at least probably four or five now that I think about it. Thank you for all your help here. But please,

Colin:

Yeah, I think the introduction changes a little bit every time things are evolving. But yeah, I was born in Lethbridge. My father’s family has been here for a few generations, and my mom was a new immigrant from North Yorkshire, England. But farming and land connected roots and being born in the heart of Blackfoot territory, I think has something later in my life that is really, I feel a deep connection to this land in Southern Alberta that I’ve only started to really explore and feel born in Lethbridge, but grew up in Calgary for most of my life. I’ve spent many days and summers and winters in the Eastern Slopes, and over those years I’ve seen clear cut. I’m like, oh, okay, I understand there’s force, but then another clear cut and then wondering when are these clear cuts going to stop? And yeah, that’s what really got me involved in this.

I think the clear cuts have been weighing on me for probably 15 to 20 years, but I didn’t know what to do about it, and the pandemic allowed me to slow down and maybe reevaluate my priorities. I spent the pandemic living with my 92 to 96-year-old grandmother that really instilled a different perspective on my life, and that’s when I became really passionate about land and water protection or being able to define it in that way. I’ve always tried to solve environmental problems through my work and my community work, but I think now is the time for greater organizing on this. I’m trying to play my humble role in organizing the community in which I have agency, which is I would say the Calgary community, but also understanding that Calgary and the Bow River watershed are nested in the South Saskatchewan watershed, which is three seven territory, the traditional territory of the Blackfoot Confederacy as well as the Tsuut’ina and the Stony Nakoda who are also stewards of this land.

And yeah, trying to find a new way to, or at least for me, a way to approach these challenges and work towards these same goals of legislated protection of the Eastern Slopes. Alan explained the whole this is our water, and if we don’t start taking a building, a new eco cultural relationship with it, instead of just seeing it as dollar signs to be extracted and not the water security for human and ecological health that it is essential for, we’re not going to have a good future. And I think more and more people are realizing this, and I’m here to play a role in carrying this torch forward in a way that honours the truth of reconciliation of this land that needs to be talked about and worked through our relationships with the land for the diverse communities that we call Canadian, which I would say are the first peoples of this land, descendants of settlers and those new Canadians who are still arriving here today and how can we bring ’em into that conversation?

Jenny:

Wonderful. Yeah, thank you so much, Colin. I want to say what Lorne Fitch said when we were down in Fort McLeod for the concerts, which was he said, if everybody here who is affected by the in slopes water and people put up their hands and a few didn’t, and he said, if you haven’t, put up your hand, put it up because everybody in this room is impacted by this water and this is how important this is. Let’s start there. Let’s outline what we’ve seen on the landscape, what our concerns are, how we got here. I’ll lead off a little bit for you. From my perspective, I really respect the work that Brad Steal Fox has done in terms of helping us understand how to measure the scale and impacts on the landscape. So to me it is we have roads that started us here and then like you guys already touched on pipelines that have come in and impacted the way the water flows.

We have oil and gas sites on the landscape that are also calling, and I drove past oil and gas sites, we drove past gravel pits, we drove past, what else did we see, facility sites. And then of course, as Colin alluded to the clear cuts as we’re driving, we can see all sorts of clear cuts through here. And then we can also talk about ranching. Ranching is a big footprint on the landscape as well. We have this lifestyle that has been taking and taking and taking and more focused on energy from my point of view, more focused on energy security, energy stability, energy growth rather than water stability. I think that’s how we got here. And I would say this is when I think about who’s involved, this is governments, regulators, industry, and potentially complacent society where this has just been ramping up to this now pivotal moment where we need to start really changing direction. That’s my point of view. I would love to hear your perspective, please, Mike.

Mike:

Well, I think you’ve encapsulated a lot of it. In order to be prepared for this podcast, I took it upon myself to look at the South Saskatchewan Regional plan, which is the policy, and I stressed that it’s a policy that guides what happens on the Eastern Slopes here. And even though I knew it when I read it, it got to be more clear to me what this thing is about and how it is actually some very careful spin doctrine because right at the get go, what it does is it outlines a, that the government is concerned about the economy and the environment. The economy is first always, there’s no jobs on a dead planet. That’s the overarching principle. And then they go on to express how the Eastern Slopes contain all these treasures, oil and gas, coal mines, uranium, magnetite, limestone, rock quarries, and a lot of things that I can’t even remember.

The list is endless, and I’m thinking, what’s your point? If somebody wants to mine uranium now on the Eastern Slopes, we’re going to go ahead and mine uranium. If somebody wants to mine magnetite, we’re going to mine magnetite. If we want more oil and gas wells, on a landscape that’s already chock full of roads and industrial intrusions, we’re going to do more of that. And then they have the audacity to say, well, we’re not going to try and bring back things to a pre-contact level, but they don’t suggest that any point exactly what point they would like to maintain or even hold it at, they keep mentioning the cumulative effects and how we’re going to manage the cumulative effects. At the same time, they’re telling everybody, well, we’re going to accommodate these other things. This is the policy that’s guiding the Eastern Slopes, and if you go out there, even if you only go do a Google trip up the Eastern Slopes, you’ll see what that policy is doing for us.

You wouldn’t be able to believe how much of our forest in this narrow little band of forest that Alan has correctly alluded to has disappeared. Sure. It’s coming back with little tiny trees that in 150 years will be a viable forest again. In the meantime, actually all of that clear cut forest doing is sucking up and aspirating more water into the air. It’s actually a net loss on the watershed. That’s kind of overall what we got. And then of course, and everybody else is speaking about it so much that I don’t feel I need to, the fact that our water will be, we don’t have enough water to deal with the immense amount of use that coal mining has. But there’s other aspects to this thing, which I think are being somewhat overlooked because I’m going to say supposing they come up with some quack science that says, well, we can deal with the selenium.

We figured out a way to deal with it. This is going to alleviate so much of the public concern about it that it may not even be a very big issue for people to realize that all up and down the entire Eastern Slopes, we’re going to have a devastation of one of the most beautiful and iconic landscapes in all of Canada. Not to mention the 200 endangered species that are within the South Saskatchewan regional area. I mean all this is going to do is escalate to a point where wildlife is not really a viable thing. What it will be is last chance tourism will be the best thing that we have left. My answer to that is A, we got to call out these policies for what they are. There’s nothing to stop any minister, land manager or director from going against the policy because he decides to and decides to allow something to happen.

We saw this firsthand on Corner Mountain, the big horn sheep capital of the world, and it’s written right into the plants that this part of southern Alberta is the best place in North America for growing big horn sheep. The world record came from here for years and years, and when Royal Dutch Shell wanted to drill wells on the top of Corner Mountain, a critical winter sheep range, all it took was a letter from the minister of the time to say, go ahead and do it, even though it’s supposed to be a prime protection zone. These are big problems, and the only way we can deal with them is to get ourselves together and reject the idea that these land use plans are doing us anything and get solid legislation that says, thou shalt do this, not thou you may do this.

Jenny:

Right. Yes. I’m hearing we’ve got these laws that are not being upheld. We have ministerial orders that are overriding the laws and the laws aren’t being held accountable to them.

Colin:

Correct policies, not laws. Is that the specific, you said that the SSRP is a policy, not legislation, it’s more easily overridden, but if they were laws,

Allan:

Well, we’ve got to be careful of laws because our fixed election date laws are a prime example. They can be changed pretty quickly if the government of the day decides they want to be changed. You would have to build a law that was really hard to change. But it’s absolutely critical.

The government will claim that there’s a whole lot of reasons for doing X, Y, or Z. Fact is the dominion forest or back before there’d been a tree cut out here except for the railways recognized that, and I call it the sponge that is the Eastern Slopes, was critical to the prairies. They put up a forest reserve, and we protected it. We burned it down in the thirties. But when I started coming out here in the sixties, there were five trails. I mean, when you got to the end of the old man campground, old man river campground, that was the end of the road. Dad walked us four or five miles up that creek to fish, and we saw nobody after the first mile. Now I’m going to run into 63 ATVs, RVs, dirt bikes, whatever. They’re going to be running through the stream, destroying the integrity of the stream. They break down the banks. We need rules and regulations that are solid. They have to be enforced and they have to be protected from the whim of the minister of the day.

Jenny:

Right? Yeah. The power that our government is using, I mean, let’s be specific with the coal mines. Okay, the 76 policy was in place. Then we had Sonya Savage come in and say, Nope, we don’t care about this anymore. Then we had an uproar of people say, no, let’s put it back in place. And then there was the coal committee that was formed after a year spent trying to make sure that we had a plan to start changing. And you can speak to this, I’m just outlining the things. That committee came out with some recommendations. Those were supposed to be actioned, and instead we had a new government come in place in 2023 that said, Nope, we’re going to revisit these coal mines again. And then through in the middle of the coal hearing, which I know the Living Landowner group had a big part in our Minister of Energy circumvented that process and said, we’re opening up the Eastern Slopes entirely again and promising a policy for open or for closed pit mining in some miraculous form, but hasn’t actually put it in legislation or law

Colin:

Consulting with industry in order to develop what it looks like.

Jenny:

Right. And then the industry, I just need to add this because this just is the icing on the cake. We have these potential lawsuits that our government seems to be egging on rather than defending. And one of the coal miners Atrium said that they can’t use the technology that the minister is proposing in this legislation, and therefore this lawsuit is going ahead. They actually use that in their statement of claims saying, we cannot do this miraculous type of coal mining because it would be too expensive.

Allan:

Well, that’s basically what the government’s been doing is talking about magical thinking,

Jenny:

Right?

Allan:

We have technology that will prevent selenium. The Mining Institute of Canada had Golder & Associates, one of the best mining consulting companies in the world, review stuff. You can’t clean up selenium. And as Mike said, if we had a massive breakthrough, yes, you can capture all the water, you can suck all the selenium out of it, the stuff that comes out will be clean. We don’t change the fact that you’re changing hundreds and hundreds of square kilometers from a sponge to a rock pile. You mentioned Brad Stel Fox. His work shows that if they opened up the proposed mines in this area, just in this area, not going up to the Clearwater or up to Grand C or any of those other places, there would be 6 billion tons of rock debris. And I’m sorry, rock piles simply do not absorb hold and slowly release water. And even if they clean up the selenium, that doesn’t mention all the other uglies that come out of leaching rock. Selenium’s the big one, but it’s not the only one. And as I said, we screw it up. We can’t put it back together again, this would be the Humpty Dumpty of all Humpty Dumpty. If you wanted to try and put a mountain back together again after you’re dynamite it

Jenny:

Not going to happen. Colin, do you have anything to add in terms of where we are, where we’re coming from your perspective?

Colin:

I think a lot of good stuff has already been covered. I feel like there’s been something shifted in government lately. It’s like governing behind closed doors and governing by mystical science in many ways. But I think there’s also just a cultural issue here of entitlement and modern prosperity. As you said in the sixties, the old man campground was like the end of the road. Two forces. The extractive forces of corporations are seeking to turn nature into profit, as the systems that allow that to happen have grown over time. Regulations have been suppressed or repealed like the coal policy. But also during the Pandemic West Fraser, at the time was Spray Lake Sawmills, lobbied the provincial government and miraculously got a 30% increase in the annual allowable cut, and then sold that business for millions of dollars to a multinational forestry company that basically has the licence to log the entire Eastern Slopes for the next 20 years without any real enforcement or so that’s just one part.

The puzzle that could be for oil and gas, for forestry, for coal mining, regulation is suppressed so that the environment doesn’t have as much of a voice. And that’s coupled with the cultural impact of more people living here, living very wealthy, prosperous lifestyles, being able to afford machines like ATVs, dirt bikes, fancy recreational machines. It’s not just walking up the creek from yeah, you outline this very well, you go up the creek now. Now there’s 60 ATVs and all this stuff. This wealth and entitlement of being able to use the landscape, maybe thinking back to when it was better and with this shifting baseline syndrome, I think some people see it, but not everybody, but it’s always been like this and what damage am I causing by doing X, Y, and Z? I think there’s some sort of cultural shift that needs to happen, but I don’t know how that happens and it’s constantly going to be this fight against this individualism where I’m allowed to drive my A TV or the corporation or West Fraser is following the rules when they do that clear cut, how bad can it be?

But this is where I think we keep organizing the community, having a guard encouraging a guardian and a stewardship type mindset that can be collectively woven together to build a story that’s different from the one that I’ve grown up with, which is that the mountains are amazing and they’ll always be there for us. And just trusting that the regulations were going to take care of that. And I’ve learned that that’s not the case.

The Adult Conversations to Be Had in Each Watershed

Jenny (00:28:16):

Well, thank you guys. You’ve outlined the problem quite well and touched a little bit on some solutions, but let’s expand that thinking a little bit. In terms of what needs to be done, let’s outline some of that. I really liked the conversation I had with Kevin Van Tighem and Lorne Fitch last year around, let’s be specific. We’re in the Beaver Mines, sorry, the Castle River Watershed, and you’ve alluded to this. You have a group of people that have been protecting this area. Teach us, help us understand what the conversations are. What we discussed was that a watershed needs to have adult conversations around what is on the landscape and what can go, what needs to stay. These are the ways I look at it in terms of actually getting the work done. I appreciate we have some holes in legislation and you can certainly get into that, Mike, but first, can you outline for us what conversations or what would that look like for us to come together and have these adult conversations about the harms that are on the landscape and what we do about them?

Allan:

If I can throw one word in quickly, it’s limits.

Mike:

Yeah, good word. Well, I’ve been posting a bit about what’s happening in the Bob Marshall wilderness area in Montana, which is a piece of the Rocky Mountain front that is almost identical in size to the area between Coleman and Kananaskis Country, 1 million acres of wilderness that people every now and then from Montana post on their experiences in the Bob Marshall and I think, “Oh God, if only we could have and do that.” And I ask this question, “Well, why couldn’t we have that?

Why does our landscape need to be run by multinational foreign corporations that are building roads, bulldozing, cutting down the trees, damming up the rivers and destroying the wildlife? Why doesn’t our government look after the public interest and what the hell is the public interest? It’s those benefits that benefit all of us and not the special interests and not the corporate interests. It’s the air, it’s the land, it’s the wildlife, it’s the water. It’s the chance to get away to real wilderness and get away from all of the other problems that we have in society. We’re losing that. In fact, I would say we lost 80% of it on the Eastern Slopes here. If you go out there and look at, as you all alluded to, the kind of impacts, the over amount of use from everything, offroad, vehicles, cattle, industrial activities, all of that has entirely shifted the focus away from having a land ethic that reveres our water and our land and our wildlife and our wilderness.

And if there’s anything that we need to do, we need to instill that sense back in the public somehow through this kind of thing I presume. But also to have legislation that would protect the police force. All of the groups nowadays are talking about protecting the Eastern Slopes. I see it everywhere, “Protect the Eastern Slopes”. But what are they talking about? What does that, and that’s the question that I have because I hear, “Well, let’s protect the Eastern Slopes and stop the coal mines. There’s nobody that wants to talk much about logging. Definitely nobody that wants to talk about the cattle or the offroad vehicles or all of the other impacts that are happening out there. And I say this, we need to look at an example that’s working. And there is one just south of the border. There’s one that’s working fine. There’s a sustainable economy around it and it provides benefits for millions of people. My answer is we need to be aiming towards big wilderness protection for what we got left on the Eastern Slopes.

Jenny:

And you’re right. Why reinvent the wheel? Let’s work from something that’s already working and build it up. And this is Collin’s been looking at BC a lot. We’ve heard about this. Montana has a plan for, they have a reforestation model in Montana from, am I saying that right?

Colin:

We’ve been pointed in that direction, Pyramid Logging, but we haven’t made any connections there.

Allan:

Yeah, they just closed.

Mike:

That brings about another point, and that is the vast amount of restoration work that we have to do on the Eastern Slopes. That means bringing back some species that have disappeared like bison and beavers and reforesting, re-bedding the roads, getting rid of all the industrial roads and somehow dealing with the massive amount of old gas wells and abandoned well sites and stuff that we have. I mean there’s work. There’s a lot of work.

Jenny:

There’s so much work for people to do. That’s a 260 billion economy is the way I like to describe it. The amount of oil and gas sites on the landscape. And we do have the loss, but we have polluter pay laws, we have the means we don’t have the will to go ahead.

Mike:

You’re kind of bringing into a whole other area here, and that is almost all of my life. The Royal Dutch Shell Corporation has been drilling and roading into the east slopes here all the way from Waterton to Caroline. They have three massive gas fields that they have now sold to a much smaller company, one that can nowhere near come up with the amount of collateral to deal with all of the vast reclamation work that needs to be done out there. And this is what the oil companies do. They produce until it’s not that profitable anymore, sell ’em off to smaller and then the smaller and pretty soon at the end of the day, everything out there is bankrupt and the taxpayers are going to foot the bill for it. We’ve got from just this one corporation, we’ve got somewhere between 400 and 800 sour gas wells, three sulphur plants that have contaminated the groundwater around them for up to four kilometers with sulfonate. And we have hundreds of miles of gravel roads where there should be no gravel roads that need to be dealt with. And the company that made 200 not that’s worth 260 billion on the world Stock Exchange is going to walk away from here and not have to put a nickel in to deal with that. This is the same company that made seven to 9 billion every quarter in Alberta here on these folks.

I mean, we’ve got a massive problem with the government and the regulatory body that does not look after us. They’ve been called the a ER is considered to be captive regulators for a good reason because they never have ruled against any of these projects

Allan:

That basically brings up the regulation is fine without enforcement. It’s not regulation. If you can go out and do bad stuff and walk away from it somehow, no matter how well the lawyers finagle the legal stuff, it’s not regulation.

You absolutely have to enforce it. And that means at some point someone like Royal Dutch gets their hands more than slapped like Teck Mines in BC got fined $60 million. It sounds like a huge amount, but when you start translating that against their profits, did it stop? No. If it doesn’t stop ’em, it’s not regulation.

Jenny:

That’s right. Yeah.

Allan:

You just have to, again, going back to my earlier comment on limits, when I started out here a decade or two after Mike first walked around this property, there were a million, million and a half people in Alberta. We’re up at 5 million and we’ve multiplied our technology and our ability to bang things up. When I came out here as a 10-year-old, I could have done almost anything short of lighting a fire and I couldn’t have hurt the countryside. Now I can come out there with my brother, six friends, four ATVs, and we can tear the country apart and we can bring our chainsaws and cut down a whole lot of trees to not create effective firewood. And then you magnify that by the ability of a rancher to clean out a hillside, you can’t do it. Somebody has to sit down and realistically decide, this is how much use our countryside can take and cut it back. You referred to Alces and the people who worked for them, they’ve got some very nice tools that say, “if you get beyond so many miles of road or so many kilometers per square kilometer”, whichever terminology you want to use, “you damage the habitat for X, Y, and Z”, that stream crossing shouldn’t be more than X. And you have to do it really carefully and do any of that not in your life. We need to determine as a society that this is how much we can do and we can’t do more. And that means a lot of people who have been saying, it’s my right are going to be told No, it’s your wrong.

Jenny:

And I think to your point about limits we are facing, we drove past how many rivers? Two, three rivers only way here

Colin:

Drove over many creeks and rivers, but

Jenny:

We did not get a lot of snow this year. To me, the rivers are low and that’s normal for this time of year, but where’s the snow pack to feed the rivers? We’re potentially in a few ways meeting limits. I’m listing one, which is a real water shortage that is potentially here this year for the agriculture district for sure. The other is we are at a place where the world does not want energy export anymore. We’re finally starting to see a tipping point in the global system where energy demand for fossil fuels at least is falling off. And I know that probably a lot of people would argue this, but I’m just going to point to what’s happening in the United States right now with Trump placing [10%] tariffs, dropping oil prices. Nobody’s drilling into a $60 oil scenario and India is moving towards renewables. They’re talking about India and China being the biggest demand users. They’ve finally ramped up their renewable systems. A big drop is expected in my view. There are lots of reasons to take limits seriously right now and realize that this is a pivotal moment for us to be adults and have those potentially difficult conversations. Do you want to say more to that, Colin?

Colin:

Yeah, maybe working on that limited theme. Just think it makes me think of tipping points. There’s all sorts of negative tipping points, which I feel like we probably crossed or are very close too. But I also feel like there’s social tipping points and the scale of impact is undeniable. And there’s still many people that are unaware or don’t think about that in their day to day, but there’s a, thanks to the coal mining and the drought, the natural limits that we’re bumping up against, I think, and you think about the Calgary-Bearspaw water line leak, debacle this last year. I think all of these are contributing to a moment that I think we have a potential for a tipping point. It looks really bad with our current government not really doing anything environmentally positive. What’s happening south of the border is unpredictable and creates a lot of, but I think it also creates a moment where we realize on the security side of things like water security, economic security, they’re all somewhat related. There’s been so much good work that’s been happening, but I think we’re now reaching a tipping point where all the different interest holders,

Water is becoming a central, central organizing issue that we can all agree on or more people can agree on than say climate change or clear cut logging specifically. But if we go to the fundamental layer of healthy water that is key to a healthy future for anything human health, but economy, all these things, I think we’re at this moment where if we organize appropriately around that, we can bridge gaps between different interested parties. And I feel like we’re nearing that or that potential is on the table for the year ahead. Thanks to the coal mining issue, there’s been so much momentum and solidarity built, especially in southern Alberta around that. And yeah, just the ridiculous things that this government’s doing is kind of exposing the corruption and, are you serious? They can’t be doing that. And this is what I hope will bring people together and rely on this people power and coalition building.

That’s where I’m trying to weave things together and how we think about it around the whole landscape scale. Like you’ve been talking to people up in Clearwater County, they have very similar issues to the old man. They’re different watersheds and different communities. But yeah, weaving these together. And then, yeah, there’s, Jenny alluded to that recently connected with the BC Watershed Security Coalition, and then over the four years of the pandemic, basically 2020 to now, they organized all their watersheds in partnership with local First Nations and did all the deliberating and came up with new policies and collaborated with government. They had maybe a more friendly government than we do, but they’ve just unlocked a hundred million dollars for watershed security and restoration across BC.

Allan:

Yeah, but 60 million of that is tech fine.

Colin:

I think 50 million of it was from the BC Real Estate Foundation. The Real Estate Foundation realized acknowledged how important water security is to

Jenny:

Right, the value of homes.

Colin:

Yeah.

Jenny:

What is your home worth if you have no water to it.

Mike:

What’s anything worth?

Jenny:

No kidding.

Colin:

Exactly. And I think that’s where people, that conversation of if there’s no water in the river, what we can’t survive here.

How Do We Start Protecting and Restoring the Eastern Slopes?

Jenny (00:43:53):

That’s right. And it’s a real equalizer, isn’t it? Because suddenly all of these benefits like you were describing about ATBs and the ability to go out there with six different families and make havoc, are you going to want or care about any of those activities if you don’t have water where you live? Okay, let’s get into the how, which is always the most difficult part of this conversation, but there’s a couple of things that have come up in here already, and I appreciate that. But just to expand on that a bit, I want to touch on something that I’ve been working on with the group, the care coalition. It’s a coalition for responsible energy, and we are looking at the PLU pay principle and trying to make sure that the orphan fund, that is our safety net. That’s the safety net that the industry promised us back in the nineties when we saw this problem mounting, this is what they were going to do.

They were going to be there for us in the future. Now it’s the future. We need to get this orphan fund actually to a level where it’s supposed to be. We’re going to launch a campaign right away here to get the orphan fund adequately funded. It means hearings to Colin’s point about the coal hearing and how much it’s brought people into awareness. We’re going to take this forward and seek a hearing on the oil and gas side and hopefully get the same crowds out to understand how reckless the regulations are, how they’re not being upheld in that space especially. That’s one thing. I think the other thing is about trying to get to this coalition building, this organization of horizontal organizing. I’d like to describe it, and that’s the work that Colin and I have been doing on the BIOREGIONAL organizing sessions. This is where we’re trying to build that awareness and knowledge around people that are just the average Albertan, as Brad has said, that we have enough people to push back and demand this, I think you were calling it these local value systems that we need to remind ourselves we can’t have it all. That’s a bit for me on where we go. But yeah, please expand Mike on how you see us moving forward now.

Mike:

Well, I know what Timberwolf is doing, and that is we’ve joined forces with the public interest law clinic in Calgary, and our objective is to get comprehensive legislation developed before the next election so that we have something to hand the politicians and say, this is what we’d like to see on the Eastern Slopes. Would you endorse this and put their feet to the fire? And truthfully, one of the big ways that we got the castle protected is exactly that. It was a timing more than anything because we were out there protesting the logging in the castle at the same time as the election was coming up and the new Democrats saw all this on television and so on. And Shannon Phillips, as a part of her campaign promise said, well, if you elect me, I’ll protect the castle. And she did, and somebody falling through it was a narrow window.

But I see that same kind of window coming up for us again. And if we have a concrete plan for what we want to see on the Eastern Slopes, and from our point of view, it would be very much widespread wilderness protection that would eliminate a lot of industrial and other activities that are happening there. And I know this is a tough sell because a lot of people are involved in those things, but they wouldn’t have to disappear all at once. It could be a matter of grandfathering out some of them over a reasonable length of time, but at the end of the day, we would have something very real. We would have a protected watershed. We would quit losing species of wildlife, and we would still have a place where many, many people could enjoy the wilderness, not on machines, but by getting there and doing more traditional back country pursuits.

That’s where we’re headed. I know that ultimately what’s really required is public hearings, and that is something that this government has really gotten away from entirely. Now the only way you can comment on things like planned use plans or something is, they give you a colouring book with very prescribed choices for you. You don’t ever really get to talk about or hear what the next guy thinks about it, or to realize that there’s a broad consensus of people that just plain don’t want this to happen out there. We don’t see that the government sees it and they can tilt it any way they want to. I say A, we need public hearings on what should happen with the eastern slope starting right away, and B, we need to be looking at examples that are working. And I suggest that the ones that are truly working are the ones where they’ve designated big wilderness protection.

That is not impossible. We can buy our way back out of a lot of these industrial intrusions that are happening there, and we’re going to have to, but the government spends money on things that are detrimental to us, big money on things that are detrimental. So why not on things that would ultimately have a very positive outcome. Just on the broader picture, years ago I read Jared Diamond’s book collapse and why some civilizations fail and why some succeed. And he listed five factors that have brought down all civilizations, and they are, as I remember them, climate change, deforestation, industrial degradation, loss of a trading partner. And this seemed ridiculous when I was reading it that we would lose a trading partner and ultimately war because all of these things ultimately lead to war when the resources are so diminished and you’ve got no way to trade for things you need, that leads to war. And I’m looking at our situation today and I’m saying, well, what part of this don’t we have right now? And what’s the ultimate outcome of it going to be for us unless we change this, turn this shepherd on? From my point of view, unless we can really pull together all of the factions that have the good intent for getting a land ethic and for looking after what we got last year, we could easily be headed down that other road.

Jenny:

Yes. And this is where alternatives really help us understand where we want to go rather than what’s ahead of us. Thank you so much for outlining those things. My goodness. Yes, you’re right. It’s so hard to believe that we’ve lost, we’re at war with the United States right now. Yes, it’s an economic war, but it’s war and we need to recognize it as that and understand, like you said, if we don’t act where we’re headed, it’s the evidence is there 200 years in our history at least, please,

Allan:

A, to pick up on some of the stuff you said, Mike, the man limit, the number of people let in. You have to apply for a permit. You can only launch at a certain point. You must camp at certain places, completely carry in, carry out. You don’t get to leave your poop in the woods. You don’t get to share the latrine with the bears, and it’s a wonderful experience, but if you’re not really lucky, you don’t get to do it. And that seems to be anathema to Alberta. You can have a bad experience and everybody can have it, or you can have a good experience and only a few of you get it.

And Alberta has been opting for bad experiences all the time. They don’t appear to recognize that you can sell a picture of a tree a few million times, you can sell it two by fours only. They’re into monoculture, reforestation. They haven’t apparently even read Suzanne Simard book about how forests maybe really were not mow it, plant it with the same stuff, kill everything else, and hope We know that most forests are multi species and we know that most of them are multi-age and all of that stuff. And yes, occasionally bad s**t happens. Things catch fire and they burn down towns like Jasper. But that’s also a reflection mostly of the fact we spent a hundred years being stupid, and if we hadn’t spent a hundred years being stupid, we wouldn’t have burned Jasper. We have to look at limits. But on the environmental side, the anti-government side, the anti-business side, whatever you want to call this, you and I have both been called eco terrorists, I think by the people I’d like to call Eco Vandals. There’s a whole lot of people out there, but we are in little groups and little doesn’t work when you’re up against a giant, despite the David and Goliath stories, Goliath damn near always wins.

We’ve got to find a way to become larger, more effective, and that’s going to take some of the local out of it. But I’d rather win with a giant something than lose with a whole bunch of virtuous little guys like Mike and I can probably name a dozen groups in southwest Alberta that are involved. None of them are big enough to fight Gina Rowland or Gina. None of us are big enough to fight Shell, but if we could get a WA and C Paws and Timberwolf and Livingston landowners and Pasco and Chinook Headwaters and the list goes on into a cohesive group, we might actually be able to attack things. I know what a good environmental lawyer costs. Well, I can’t finance him for very long, but 10 or 12 of us could finance him for longer, and a thousand of us could probably finance him into a good fight.

Jenny:

Right?

Allan:

We’ve got to start being strategic and we have to figure out who we need to target. On the other side, we go out and talk to crowds, and you’ve referred to this, they’re mostly silver haired. Part of that is age, but part of that is also interest and time. I mean, I didn’t have time to do this when I was working, but we can do it if we target and we need to figure out how we get to the people on the government side to