The chief of a First Nation downstream of the Alberta oilsands wants Canada to address the toxic contaminants in his waters and take seriously his community’s concerns about cancer rates before he’ll consent to new fast-tracked fossil fuel projects.
Mikisew Cree First Nation Chief Billy-Joe Tuccaro said he delivered this message personally to Prime Minister Mark Carney during a summit with First Nations in Canada’s capital region last week.
“I’m 48 years old. I lived in the bush off the land when I was a kid. I remember drinking water from the rivers and the lakes. There’s no way we do that shit nowadays,” Chief Billy-Joe Tuccaro told The Narwhal in an interview in Ottawa.
“By the time my people are actually seen in an adequate hospital, it’s three or four months behind. And if it’s a severe illness like cancer, they’re coming back home as stage three or four, and sometimes they’re even coming home in a box, dead,” he continued.
“That’s what I told Mr. Carney. You want my consent? You improve my people’s health.”
The ancestral lands of the Treaty 8 Cree nation of over 3,000 people, where the Peace and Athabasca rivers converge in northern Alberta near Fort Chipewyan, lies north of the oilsands’ vast reservoirs of toxic waste, called tailings ponds. Peer-reviewed evidence has shown these reservoirs are leaking into the groundwater.
The community experiences high rates of some cancers it has long suspected are tied to oilsands pollution. A 2014 report commissioned by the Mikisew Cree First Nation found the community faces a “cancer crisis,” in which “cancer occurrence increased significantly with participant employment in the oilsands and with the increased consumption of traditional foods and locally caught fish.”
In 2024, the Trudeau government committed $12 million toward the Fort Chipewyan Health Study to “examine the impacts of the oilsands on community members’ health,” in partnership with Mikisew Cree First Nation, as well as Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and Fort Chipewyan Métis Nation.
Tuccaro said he met with Carney at the First Nations Major Projects Summit this month in Gatineau, Que., which was held to discuss the government’s Building Canada Act, passed into law in June as part of Bill C-5.
The law, which allows projects deemed by the government to be in the national interest to be fast-tracked, was passed before the summit was held.
The chief said he “hand delivered” a letter to the prime minister about his community’s cancer rates and toxic water. He said the following day, government officials told him they were open to talking further.
Mikisew Cree First Nation also announced this week it has formally invited Carney to Fort Chipewyan to demonstrate first hand the impacts of oilsands development.
The Narwhal asked Carney’s office for more details about the conversation between the chief and the prime minister, whether there were any followup conversations planned, whether the oilsands health study was still funded and ongoing, and whether Carney would accept the invitation to Fort Chipewyan. A spokesperson acknowledged receipt of questions but did not provide a response by publication.
One reason for the community’s concern about oilsands impacts is its experience with a 2023 leak from the Kearl oilsands facility, operated by Imperial Oil, according to a letter Tuccaro wrote to the Senate of Canada this June.
Imperial Oil is one of the members of the Pathways Alliance, an industry group of six large oilsands companies, which has proposed a plan to retrofit dozens of facilities to capture carbon pollution created during the process of extracting oil, and pump the emissions through a new pipeline into underground storage areas hundreds of kilometres away.
During the leak, an Imperial Oil tailings area seeped into groundwater and contaminated surface water. But the leak went unreported to the public for nine months before the company and the provincial regulator in Alberta notified community members.
“In the oilsands, human health is usually our health, and we have seen fish have more rights than we do in these processes,” Tuccaro wrote in that letter.
Imperial Oil said in a summer 2025 update that “all monitoring data continues to demonstrate no indication of adverse impacts to local wildlife or fish populations in nearby river systems, and no risks to drinking water for local communities.” The company said it had expanded a “seepage control system” at the Kearl site and boosted monitoring efforts.
“We regret this incident occurred,” the company wrote, adding it was grateful for the efforts of “local Indigenous communities.”
Ruth Anne Beck, a spokesperson for the company, declined further comment in response to questions from The Narwhal.
Liberal government has had hot-and-cold relationship with Pathways Alliance oilsands companies in the past
Overall, Tuccaro gave the prime minister credit for meeting with Indigenous representatives in person and answering tough questions.
“He seems sincere,” Tuccaro said of Carney.
But, he added, “I’ll always take their conversations with me with a grain of salt, until I see some good, tangible results.”
Hundreds of chiefs and other representatives gathered in Gatineau this month to discuss potential national-interest projects.
One industrial development the government is considering for national-interest status, according to Tuccaro and reporting by Canada’s National Observer, is the proposal by the Pathways Alliance.
Carney and the premiers have vowed to deliver what they call “decarbonized Canadian oil and gas” by pipeline to overseas markets. But oil can’t be fully decarbonized. The alliance’s plan does not address most of the carbon pollution associated with fossil fuels, produced when they’re burned for energy.
This is one of the facts that landed the group in hot water over greenwashing allegations. And there have been concerns from First Nations, whose territory would be home to the project, about the potential impacts on health and safety.
In his letter to the Senate, Tuccaro warned that continued oilsands development, even if it’s built on carbon-capture technology, risks exposing his people to further harm.
“Building pipelines for oil and gas, and even ‘decarbonized’ oil and gas, i.e. through Pathways Alliance, will only increase production, increase impacts and worsen our health,” he wrote in the letter.
For years, the Pathways Alliance has sought federal funding, regulatory exemptions and political certainty for its megaproject, which it has said would cost $16.5 billion to build initially, and $75 billion if fully realized over the next 30 years.
A large portion of that funding would be public money: at one point, the oilsands companies asked the government to cover two-thirds of its upfront capital costs.
The Trudeau government’s tax credit for carbon capture technology, and Alberta’s own carbon capture program, already cover up to 50 per cent and 12 per cent of capital costs respectively.
The government also launched an agency that dove into negotiations with the group to sign carbon contracts that could help pay for operational costs, too.
At the same time, the Trudeau government did not write a blank cheque. It refused the alliance’s request to skip a federal environmental assessment and it proposed an emissions cap on the oil and gas industry that it portrayed as insurance the alliance does what it says it can.
At times, the Trudeau government expressed frustration that companies were sinking billions of dollars in profits into things like dividends or share buybacks instead of decarbonization efforts.
The Carney government has not formally jettisoned the proposed emissions cap, but its Building Canada Act does shorten the assessment process for projects deemed in the national interest.
And federal Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson, a former board member for MEG Energy — one of the Pathways Alliance members — endorsed the project soon after he was appointed.
“All of us — governments and industry — need to get the Pathways project done,” Hodgson told the Calgary Chamber of Commerce in May. “We need to demonstrate … that we are a responsible industry, and this government believes Pathways is critical to that reality.”
If the government dubs the alliance’s project as in the national interest, the shortened federal assessment would occur on top of the fact that Alberta’s regulator has already said it would not carry out a provincial assessment that had been requested by landowners, environmental groups and Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation.
Carney’s office did not respond to questions before publication about whether the government plans to deem the oilsands project in the national interest.
The alliance did not respond to questions before publication about its efforts to reduce tailings leaks, the status of its proposal under the Building Canada Act or of the oilsands study, or its reaction to Mikisew Cree First Nation’s comments.
Some chiefs express frustration over Carney’s First Nations summit
Carney issued a statement on July 17 saying the government had heard the “insights, ideas and priorities” of First Nations during the summit and discussed how to “contribute to greater prosperity for Indigenous communities.”
But several chiefs came out of the summit disappointed with what they called a “disrespectful” process that did not equate to the kind of meaningful consultations constitutionally required of the Crown.
Eight First Nations from Treaty 6 and Treaty 8, representing territory stretching across the western Prairies, issued a statement saying the summit’s agenda items were changed several times and invitations were sent out at the last minute.
“The chiefs are denouncing the meeting as a top-down, illegitimate process that excludes Treaty Nations, undermines the Treaty relationship, and manufactures the appearance of Indigenous consent for legislation that threatens their rights and sovereignty,” it reads.
Five of the chiefs also appeared before media on July 17 to express their frustration.
“This summit is political theatre,” O'Chiese First Nation Chief Phyllis Whitford said. Speakers "have been handpicked," she added, in a "predetermined process."
The sentiment echoed the condemnation many First Nations chiefs expressed about the passage of Bill C-5 itself.
Chief Gary Lameman of Beaver Lake Cree Nation, one of the nations that wanted an assessment of the Pathways Alliance project, described the bill as “rammed through Parliament.”
The Building Canada Act says affected Indigenous communities must be consulted, and Carney has described it as “meaningful consultation” for both determining national interest projects and the conditions placed on them.
But there is no written requirement in the law to seek their free, prior and informed consent before projects proceed.
Senator Paul Prosper, a Mi'kmaq lawyer, proposed adding an amendment to the bill that would have required Cabinet to consider this, but it failed to pass. On July 17, the senator said it was key for the government to “learn from this exercise.”
It “provides an opportunity for the Carney government to improve the relationship with Indigenous groups,” he said.
“Hopefully this isn’t a one-and-done approach.”
This story is available for use by Canadian Press clients through an agreement with The Narwhal. It was originally published in The Narwhal, a non-profit online magazine that publishes in-depth journalism about the natural world in Canada. Sign up for weekly updates at thenarwhal.ca/newsletter.
Carl Meyer, The Narwhal
