Season 1, Round 4 Highlights

When will we make key decisions?

This discussion highlights the critical importance of water management and environmental preservation in Alberta. Bruce Smedley emphasizes the need for comprehensive river basin modeling to ensure sustainable water usage amidst urban development. Ian Skinner raises concerns about declining water tables and inadequate governmental response. Mike Northcott and Neil Konner discuss the legal implications of environmental legislation and its enforcement. Christina McCharles criticizes the manipulation of water definitions to benefit industry. Lise Mayne shares a personal story of loss due to flooding and advocates for the protection of natural landscapes. Alex and Andrea Murphy address the psychological impact of environmental crises on youth, stressing the need for accurate communication and education. Nicole Chang calls for fostering a connection to nature through education. Kip Monaghan and Jenny encourage individual and community actions to make a positive environmental impact. Finally, Brad Chapin introduces a self-regulation skillset program to help individuals manage challenges and promote hope.

J. Bruce Smedley – 50-Year Engineer | International | Public | Private Industry | Government | Banking | Environmental Stewardship

I’ve been looking at some of the articles out of Germany and South Africa and they’re talking about water being more valuable than gold. We need to take that kind of approach to it. I’m not sure there’s planning for how we develop this province related to water availability. For instance, the city of Calgary wants to grow, and yet we’re not convinced that this is where the City of Calgary should be. We maybe should be growing in Canmore, not downtown down the Bow River here, because we just don’t know what the long-term availability of water is going to be here. And then you see, for instance, we’re approving a lot of developments up towards Banff and Canmore and those places and whether those developments should go ahead on a basis of the water that we’ll never get to Saskatchewan.

I don’t know. I mean, we have to answer these kinds of questions. And so that was the other aspect of what I was looking for from this province was some indication that they’re doing river basin modelling, which is all of the relationship between the rainfall that comes, whether the aquifers are being filled up, and whether or not the usage is meeting the supply and all of those aspects, plus the social aspects of irrigation water for fields versus urban water uses versus recreational water uses whatever. And we don’t even factor in the ducks or the birds or the fish for that matter. I’m just concerned that we’re not putting this science together at the level that we need to be able to appreciate what’s happening to our environment.

Ian Skinner – Environmental Resource Management | Calahoo-Villeneuve Sand and Gravel Area Resident

I’m Ian Skinner and I live in Sturgeon County, we’re within the area structure plan, the Calahoo-Villeneuve of Sand and Gravel area. Our concerns here have been, of course, the land use decisions made by the county regarding environmental legislation either being non-applicable or omitted during land use plan decisions. My background is 25 plus years with an environmental resource management background, and most recently we’ve identified a 10-meter water table decline in the area with an eight-kilometer cone of depression. And at this time, no level of government has come to us to advise of this huge decline in the water table. Also, there’s a perception that APEGA members are working outside of their jurisdiction or area of expertise.

Mike Northcott – Lac Ste Anne County Environmental Advocate

In the recent McLean’s magazine article about Beverly McLaughlin, they asked her what her job was when she was a Supreme Court judge. She says, my job was to apply the law to rectify inequalities that were not justifiable under the charter. That’s what we want to do. We want to bring that attention to the point where a decision has to be legally made.

Neil Konner & Joyce Kyncl – Mountain View County Residents

People have very little understanding of the depth of the act and what it means. It has been manipulated by our municipalities. I have had a letter from our CAO and he created a division of information from the Municipal Government Act procrastinating their position on where they stand and where the A EP stands. So act cannot be disseminated when an act is in place. It has to be followed.

Dale Christian – Red Deer County Resident | Former Red Deer River Watershed Alliance Advisor

That you’re allowed to strip the whole thing and then maybe we’ll decide whether or not based on your appeal, whether or not we can go in and take the gravel. They’ve already opened the face to contamination. There’s no doubt there. The interesting part is the surface water and the groundwater are one water. Everybody in the entire world knows that except Alberta. It’s just expedient for them to say, “No, this is groundwater. Oh, that’s below the surface. That’s groundwater. Oh, this is above the surface. This is surface water.” What they’ve been doing is they’ve been calling any surface water. When you say, well, okay, you’re interfering on an aquifer with the river, there’s water there diverting water, you don’t have a license, you’re messing it up. Then they say, no, we’re calling that surface water runoff. They’re bending all of the definitions in the Water Act, the spirit of the Water Act and what it says. And EPA two, they’re bending it to fit industry.

Ian: We have municipal governments granting immunity to law to industry. They’re granting immunity. They’re grandfathering land use. The largest strip mining activity that we’re seeing that’s adversely affecting water presently is the horse sands. Number two is sand and gravel or aggregate in Alberta. Number three is coal. We need attention brought to what’s happening here. This is a major, major issue to keep from using or enduring one statutory right section 21 in the Water Act or freedom to use water. The basic necessity of life cannot be mitigated, compensated, or remedied by any monetary award or damage that may be awarded later. According to the Public Lands Act, section 54 prohibitions, identify irreparable harm. So purposely ignoring the municipal imposed duty by municipal elected officials according to Section 60 of the Municipal Government Act during land use planning creates bylaws inconsistent with federal and provincial legislation and denies access to a statutory rate to household users as described in Section 21 of the Water Act. And as the judge said, it’s an inequality and not justifiable under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We need to bring this forward in a legal manner so I can no longer be ignored. This is for all humanity.

Lise Mayne – Rocky Mountain Bluebird Monitor | Former Principal & Teacher

I lost my home in the High River flood, so my husband and I are in Nanton because of the High River flood Eastern slopes are precious to our hearts, and I don’t know why I wasn’t born and raised there. We came to that later on and I just can’t get enough of those views and those slopes. And to me, it’s just critical that we protect those Eastern slopes. It’s one of the most beautiful places I believe that’s left on this earth. When you’re standing there and looking, you’ve got to realize that that has been there looking like that for 15,000 years. And for us to think that we’re going to put a mind there and ruin everything, the water and everything is just devastating to me. And we already are suffering in terms of habitat loss for the bluebirds and other animals that live in that area. I’m committed to all of those aspects of preservation. The grasslands also are as big as a carbon sink. So that is also critical to looking after our environment.

Alexander MacGillivray – Co-Host | Fine Arts Major | Jack-of-All-Trades

I think one of the things that I’ve noticed in terms of what we programmed Gen Z with is that there’s no future. It’s just doom and gloom. We’ve ended up creating this circumstance with our youth where they just say, well, why bother? So we’ve disillusioned that. We’ve ended up creating this crisis of purpose, this crisis of meaning after the Industrial Revolution when we started creating these conveniences and it accelerated after the beginning of the nuclear age. You could just go down to the store and get Doritos. You didn’t need to make them out of your flour, out of the wheat that you grew out of anything. For time immemorial, at least in recorded history, human being’s purpose and meaning was survival. But at the beginning of the nuclear age, the industrial-technological revolutions that followed all of a sudden survival wasn’t the purpose./p>

And progress happens when people are challenged. So when people aren’t challenged anymore and when survival is not the name of the game and they can have everything out of convenience, left, right, and center, the challenge then becomes meaning and purpose. And I think strangely, ironically, covering our kids in bubble wrap is maybe, and then providing doom and gloom scenarios simultaneously has prevented them from discovering any sort of meaning or any sort of purpose or direction. They’re just going to get depressed. They’re going to become addicts, they’re going to, and I don’t blame them.

Andrea Murphy – Anti-Oppressive | Environmental | Evidence–Based Social Worker

That reminds me of the language we use around these things when we speak to the youth because we call something a hundred-year flood, right? Well, if the next flood’s not happening for another a hundred years, I’m not going to be alive, so why should I care? But the reality is that a hundred-year flood is not happening. They’re more like 20-year floods. They’re 15-year floods, and yes, you will be around for that. The question is not “Will I be here?” You will, and we need to stop calling things, “Oh, it’s the flood of the century, or “this is record-breaking for the last hundred years”. Like you said, Alex. It doesn’t connect meaning people say, “Well, that’s so far in the future, I don’t care.” First of all, I think we need the decision-makers and the people who are in power to stop using this language, stop being inaccurate with the timelines and call it what it is.

Because the hundred-year flood in 2013 was not a hundred-year flood in the nineties. They had the same flood happen. It just wasn’t at the same level. What they’re seeing now is every 15 to 20 years, these disasters are happening again. They’re just getting worse. They might not be the same, but they’re getting worse. I think they just need to be honest with, okay, listen, Mother Nature is going to still be here when we’re all gone. If we want to be here with her, then we need to change how our relationship with Mother Nature changes our language with it and create ways that people can reinvest themselves into this.

Nicole Chang – Alberta Council for Environmental Education & Engagement Coordinator

Doom and gloom language was used so heavily to scare people into caring, but it doesn’t work. And that’s not the way people care about the environment when they feel connected to it, when they feel like they have a sense of belonging to nature, that’s when they care. That’s when they want to help and make a difference. So we need to foster that brew education and not just informal education, but formal education in the curriculum. We need to provide access to everyone to outdoor spaces. There are a lot of studies on equal access to the outdoors as well as different emotions and feelings about the outdoors because of history. So we need to provide safe and equal access to outdoor spaces and outdoor learning. As you said, Andrea is starting it at a young age and having outdoor classrooms in our schools so that students have a safe place to do this through the curriculum.

Lise:

It’s just really addressing everything and then having open and honest conversations with everyone, whether they’re a sixth grader, a 12th grader, or someone who is in their thirties or forties and maybe never had that education. But being able to be open and honest and have these conversations and show that it’s okay to talk about this, but we’re going to have a hopeful and solution-focused conversation instead. And I think just providing that space for everyone is such an important thing that we need to move forward to combat the crisis that we’re in right now.

Lise: People can do something. It seems like it’s very small, but I’m going like 53 kilometers down Highway 533 and watching these bluebirds and caring for their nests and making sure that they have a home. That’s one little person. But when you multiply it out by all the people across North America, they’re doing this same work. If kids only knew what the can be because it’s one little thing and it’s fun. It’s great fun to go out into the environment and see these babies hatch out of their eggs and watch them crawl around. They look like something out of Dr. Seuss when they’re born. So the communication has to happen because that is hopeful work and it’s work that’s being done. Multiple things are happening all around in all aspects, but we are not getting enough information about it. We have to have an attitude that we can do things, we can make a difference and we can leave a good legacy for our children.

Kip Monaghan – Alberta Council for Environmental Education & Engagement Coordinator

Add that environmental aspect or that green aspect to your career that can give you that boost in meaning, I guess, or the onus of like you must save the environment on an individual that’s way too large of a concept to even comprehend. So find your own little thing that you can do and band together with people and make a change that way, I think is more the message we’re trying to inspire people to do with my program.

Jenny Yeremiy – Co-Host | Geophysicist | Liability Expert | Public Activist

I love it, Andrea. You’re talking about giving voices to people that aren’t getting their voice heard, especially people that know the problems. I can say the same for the oil and gas industry. I was involved in the 1.7 billion that was injected to do the cleanup work, indigenous led all the way. This is, to me, the obvious no-brainer thing that I would love to foster and I’m trying to foster in this conversation with Alex and the youth as well Alex said, my boys said to me just last week, “Yeah, we don’t learn any of this in school.” It’s bananas and this is not right. And we’re having those conversations though, as Alex said, we’re taking responsibility and we’re having those conversations and we’re talking about a positive future. And I love that we talked about this as a crisis of leadership. Lisa, I love your example.

You went from being a 30-year teacher to doing something extremely simple and tangible that people can get behind and it brings the community together and it helps bluebirds and it helps other birds. It does all of those things. And so one thing I did want to mention is we are also doing in real life what we’re trying to do in conversation. So again, as I said, we want to help restore the environment and restore that social stability. So we have a Save Our Slopes campaign that we’re sponsoring The Gravity well along with another group called Land Lovers. So please look up save our slopes.ca. When I hear you guys speak, I see you all having a role in this work lease from an on-the-ground effort. Andrea, I hear a lot of social reform opportunities, Kip getting the message out, getting kids excited about this stuff. Same with you, Nicole and Alex are helping from a local level. He is inspired by Big Hill Springs. He wants to start that initiative right there with that community.

Brad Chapin – Self-Regulation Developer | Director of Clinical Services

Last few years we’ve had more requests to teach self-regulation to adults. I love this graphic, this person on this hill with this raging storm, and it’s kind of like, how do I stay on this hill with this raging storm of life? It’s called the Self-Regulation Skillset. It is a seven-week journey. Seven skills, what we teach, and three skill training areas of self-regulation, how to manage myself in the face of challenge, but it’s one skill a week. It’s a journal format. So if you’re working through this personally, but it’s also designed to, you could do this with your spouse, a partner or a small group of colleagues and make a book study out of it. It’s got discussion questions at the end of each chapter and then little QR codes that take you to a video of me talking about sort of recapping the last week’s skill and then introducing the next week’s skill, kind of what to be ready for.

Then you end with your own personal plan on these seven skills of how to apply them in your life. And then able to work through that and also share that with others if you want to. Super excited about that. There’s a lot of hope, I think, in understanding just a little bit of clarity and understanding about the basics of human behaviour combined with some skills. To me, those two things equal a lot of hope, and so I always want to send that message of hope out to people, that there are things that we can do that can help us and others feel better and do better.