Dr. Chris Arsenault’s speech at the Voice of the People Rally at the New Brunswick Legislature on Oct 20th, as published Nov. 3rd by Brunswick News as an Opinion piece:
I’m a family doctor in Fredericton, and I am mad. I’m mad that I’m writing this instead of looking after my patients, because of the threat this government’s plans pose to our health.
We health care providers in New Brunswick are barely keeping our heads above water. Several economic proposals for our province – the Sisson mine, Tantramar gas plant, Lorneville data centre and fracking – will add more sickness to an already overburdened medical system.
Let’s start with fracking. Our government is currently considering lifting the moratorium that has protected our health from this industry for over a decade.
Recently, I met with doctors in British Columbia where there has been extensive fracking in the last 20 years. At least seven doctors have left Dawson Creek, B.C., in recent years over concerns about the health harms of the gas industry, leaving the hospital’s emergency department short of half the doctors it needs. These impacts include more asthma attacks and heart disease, more babies born too early or too small, and more childhood cancer.
Dr. Chris Arsenault speaks at the New Brunswick Legislature. Photo by Bruce Wark, used with permission
I witness the suffering caused by those illnesses in my practice every day. No economic argument should take precedence over the suffering of our neighbours, our friends, and our family.
In 2012, Dr. Eilish Cleary, our then Chief Medical Officer of Health, issued a scientifically rigorous report on the health harms of fracking. It was instrumental in securing our fracking moratorium. Industry, and even government, will argue that technology has come a long way since then and that fracking is now safer. I know of no health research to support that claim. In fact, recent studies from B.C. and the United States have found more harm to health than earlier studies did, not less.
But the province doesn’t know this. After Dr. Cleary’s report, her office was systematically dismantled, with 70 of her 110 staff moved to other departments. Subsequent chief medical officers of health no longer have the capacity to create a similar report; they have been disempowered by these changes. Currently, there is only one person in the New Brunswick Department of Health responsible for environmental health.
It is impossible to understand and act on the complexity of environmental public health with such limited resources. The government doesn’t know the risks it is exposing us to. It dismantled its own means of understanding these risks.
This is wilful ignorance. We cannot let this government, or any government, ignore our health.
Clean energy alternatives exist, and they won’t make us sick. Earlier this year, the New Brunswick Medical Society approved a motion opposing fossil fuel development in the province to protect our health, with 72 per cent of voting members in favour.
Yet this province is on track to keep worsening climate change, which the World Health Organization identifies as the biggest health threat facing humanity. Burning fracked gas warms our planet even more, making summer wildfires and heat more dangerous.
No industry with these health risks should be allowed to go forward, certainly not while our Department of Health is completely unable to understand or reduce the risks. The department must be rebuilt to protect us from the harms of climate change and industrial development. Until then, we don’t even know the harms this government is allowing to take place.
To protect all New Brunswickers’ health, the Sisson mine, the Tantramar gas plant and the Lorneville data centre must be put on hold and given full health impact assessments. To protect us all, the fracking moratorium must stand.
No cheque is worth giving a kid cancer.
Dr. Chris Arsenault is a family physician in Fredericton and co-chair of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment New Brunswick committee (CAPE NB).