After continuous appeals from community members for more than 20 years, a federally funded investigation is set to begin to assess the health repercussions of the oilsands on residents in Fort Chipewyan, an Indigenous community in northern Alberta. Many residents in the community, situated over 200 kilometers north of Fort McMurray, have long suspected a connection between cancers in Fort Chipewyan and the industrial activities upstream along the Athabasca River.
The Kearl mine operated by Imperial Oil, where a 5.3-million-liter wastewater spill occurred in 2023, is about 140 kilometers away from Fort Chipewyan. The nearest project, Suncor Energy’s Fort Hills mine, is more than 90 kilometers distant.
Researchers will analyze current and past health data, investigate local disease patterns, and monitor both people and the environment. They will also assess how environmental alterations impact the community’s culture and daily life.
In an interview with CBC News, Ruby Ladouceur, president of the Fort Chipewyan Métis Nation, stated, “We’re not assigning blame, we just want clarity on what’s happening. We can’t definitively attribute everything to industrial activities without concrete evidence yet.”
The study, named Project Monument Hill after a local viewpoint overlooking Fort Chipewyan and Lake Athabasca, is a 10-year, $12 million initiative announced by the federal government in August 2024. The initial funding for the study’s planning and governance phase was received in March.
Ladouceur emphasized that the study’s approach will integrate western scientific methods with Indigenous knowledge of the land. She said, “Our objective is to enhance our comprehension of the relationship between environmental conditions, traditional land use, and the health and well-being of our people.”
According to a spokesperson for Alberta Primary and Preventative Health Services, Alberta presently does not maintain specific cancer statistics for rural areas like the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo (RMWB) and other parts of northern Alberta. Instead, it retains general or regional data and analyzes cancer cases over multiple years to ensure privacy and reliable trend interpretation.
Dr. John O’Connor, who has been vocal about cancer concerns in Fort Chipewyan since 2006, expressed satisfaction that the study is underway but voiced concerns about its lengthy 10-year duration.
Previous reports on cancer in Fort Chipewyan have focused on medical records and health trends, omitting individuals who have departed, including those seeking cancer treatments, as noted by Callie Davies-Flett, a special projects adviser with the ACFN. Studies have highlighted elevated cancer rates in Fort Chipewyan compared to the rest of Alberta and identified hazardous heavy metals and industrial contaminants in locally harvested plants and animals.
Dr. James Talbot’s 2014 report linked higher-than-expected instances of certain cancers in Fort Chipewyan to factors like lifestyle habits, lack of medical resources, and not industrial exposure, which was contested by community leaders. Ladouceur stressed that the new study aims to explore the impact of environmental changes on Indigenous health, not just lifestyle elements.
Davies-Flett pointed out the scarcity of publicly accessible data regarding the correlation between cancer in Fort Chipewyan and the environmental alterations resulting from oilsands developments, emphasizing the widespread impact on the entire community based on community members and elders’ accounts.