The New Brunswick provincial election is well underway, with decision day on October 21st. Polling so far has had mixed results, with one showing the Progressive Conservatives (PCs) and the Liberals neck and neck, and another showing the Liberals, under new leader Susan Holt, winning a majority government.
The parties have finally released their platforms, and each take a differing approach to the contentious issue of fracking. The PCs, under leader Blaine Higgs, are calling for a lifting of the decade-long and hard-won moratorium. The Liberals have avoided addressing the subject altogether, and the Green Party and leader David Coon continue to be firmly opposed to fracking.
A Brief History of Fracking in NB
Hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking or shale gas, was a big news story in 2013 when Southwestern Energy (SWN) leased land to explore for shale gas deposits in Kent County. Fracking is a technique used to extract natural gas from below the surface that involves injecting millions of litres of water and thousands of litres of unidentified chemicals underground at very high pressure in order to create fractures in the underlying shale rock formations.
SWN was exploring gas deposits using a method involving the use of special thumper trucks. These trucks would drive along the road and stop every few feet to thump the ground, sending vibrations or seismic waves deep into the earth to paint a picture of what the formations look like below, including whether gas deposits exist.
This work was happening in Elsipogtog territory, and in the face of this grave threat to the environment and to human health and safety there was a beautiful bringing together of cultures as Indigenous people, Anglophones, and Francophones from both formal organizations and the grassroots coordinated against shale gas, looking to Elsipogtog for their leadership. At that time, the major focus was simply on beating back the intrusion of fracking by preventing the thumper trucks from doing their work.
As more people got involved and more research was done to understand the process of fracking, an educational component of the campaign became key to highlight the threat fracking posed to New Brunswickers and to get more of the public onside and involved with the fight. The risks to human and environmental health were enormous and included groundwater contamination, emissions, and the intrusion of corporate control over land and resources. More research on the case against fracking is outlined in a recent NB Media coop article here by Jim Emberger of the New Brunswick Anti-Shale Gas Alliance (NBASGA).
After months of raising awareness in the public and standing strong on the frontlines, the movement was devastated by a violent RCMP raid of the encampment near Rexton. Tensions were high but public pressure continued, now with many solidarity actions taking place across so-called Canada, and ultimately the then-Liberal government in NB was pressured to form a commission to review fracking in the province. The NB Commission on Hydraulic Fracturing did public and expert consultations and released their final report in February 2016 (report here and response from the Council here), after which the Gallant government announced a moratorium on fracking in the province, minus one ongoing project in Penobsquis*.
The moratorium has now been in place for a decade, but it hasn’t gone unthreatened. When the PCs came to power in 2018 for the first time under Blaine Higgs’ leadership, the premier promised a partial lifting in his speech to the throne. Someone must have later reminded Higgs that the territory is unceded and falls under the treaties of peace and friendship, and that lifting the moratorium also required social license as identified in the Commission’s report because he never followed through on the throne speech promise.
That said, Higgs is more committed than ever to lifting the moratorium on fracking in New Brunswick. Allies are organizing an online webinar to help remind people why fracking isn’t an economic boon and instead poses a real long-term threat to the health and well-being of New Brunswickers. That event is happening on Wednesday, October 9th at 7:30 p.m. AT – registration link and more info here.
The Council is also working to raise awareness by calling members and supporters in New Brunswick to talk about concerns with fracking in advance of the provincial election on October 21st. If you’d like to help out by making a few phone calls, sign up here.
*Penobsquis, a small community in the South-West of New Brunswick, has had a potash mine and a fracking operation there for over two decades. Read more about it here and the fight to not have the community excluded from the provincial moratorium here.
Further Reading
Miles Howe, Debriefing Elsipogtog (May 2015, Fernwood publishing): https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/debriefing-elsipogtog
Excerpt from Debriefing Elsipogtog, by Miles Howe: https://rabble.ca/books/elsipogtog-vs-big-oil-recounting-mikmaq-warrior-society-resistance/