[MUSIC PLAYING]
PATRICK MCGUIRE: This is the First Nation of Aamjiwnaang's
burial grounds.
These people have been here for hundreds of years.
And about 70 years ago, they got some great new neighbors.
This is the chemical valley.
The first thing you notice when you visit Sarnia,
Ontario, is the smell.
Imagine a mixture of gasoline, melting asphalt, and a trace
of rotten egg smacking you in the face and crawling up your
nose every time you breathe.
It's a cocktail they made me unpleasantly high and dizzy.
That smell is the chemical valley, where 40% of Canada's
petrochemical industry is located in
the a 25 square area.
The chemical valley is responsible for the production
of gasoline, plastics, pesticides, fertilizers,
cosmetics, and a whole bunch of other chemicals that our
society relies on.
End It's estimated that in 2013 alone, the Canadian
petrochemical industry will generate $24 billion in sales.
Two years ago, thanks to the 60 petrochemical plants and
oil refineries that operate in the chemical valley 24/7, the
World Health Organization gave Sarnia the title of the worst
air in all of Canada.
To make matters worse, a First Nations reserve called
Aamjiwnaang where just under 1,000 people shares a fence
line with the chemical valley.
This is a serious health concern for the people of
Aamjiwnaang, as a community has consistently claimed to
have higher cancer and miscarriage rates than the
national average, and yet the government has not launched a
proper health study to investigate their allegations.
-First Nations in Sarnia, Ontario--
PATRICK MCGUIRE: Tensions between the First Nations
community of Canada, the government, and the
petrochemical industry have been running
high for a very long.
Regular participation in highway blockades and protests
are the norm for many First Nations communities in Canada
who are pushing back against environmental damage to their
native land.
-You're fucking cowards!
-What happened is that Anthony W. George was killed.
His relatives insist he was a peaceful man.
PATRICK MCGUIRE: One of the major issues that the
residents of Aamjiwnaang need to deal with are chemical
leaks from the plants themselves.
Oftentimes, these leaks go unreported, and in the first
half of 2013 alone, there were three
spills of hydrogen sulfide.
One of them sent several small children from Aamjiwnaang's
daycare to the hospital.
Once we heard about Aamjiwnaang'g struggle, we
knew we had to go visit the chemical valley ourselves to
try and get a better sense of how the relationship between
the First Nations and the petrochemical industry is
being handled, what's being done to ensure the safety of
the people of Aamjiwnaang, and what the future of the
chemical valley holds.
We visited Sarnia while a high profile energy conference was
being held.
Political leaders and energy executives had converged on
the city to discuss how more money could be squeezed out of
Canada's most valuable resource--
our oil.
As you might imagine, the people of Aamjiwnaang were not
happy to hear that more industry would be
coming their way.
-We want clean air, healthy family.
-No more chemicals in the valley.
-We want clean air, healthy family.
PATRICK MCGUIRE: While protesters demonstrated
outside of the conference, the energy industry discussed a
plan to build new oil pipelines all across Canada.
In response, Vanessa Gray, a 20-year-old activist from
Aamjiwnaang, was there to cause a disruption.
VANESSA GRAY: I have the right to clean air and fresh water.
If you guys feels that money is more important than having
water, then there's something really fucked up here.
Thank you.
[SHOUTING]
PATRICK MCGUIRE: -When1 you were on stage, there were
probably about six different people that came up to you,
trying to get off stage.
You didn't say a word to any of them.
Is that a difficult thing to do, just sort of keeping a
stone face?
VANESSA GRAY: Yeah.
I mean, this lady came up to me and said that I was taking
her right away to enjoy the conference in peace.
PATRICK MCGUIRE: How did you feel about that?
VANESSA GRAY: I feel that she's taking my right away to
breathe air and drink water.
PATRICK MCGUIRE: After chatting with Vanessa outside
of the energy conference, we figured we should go meet up
with her in a less stressful setting.
That didn't exactly happen.
She brought us to a site in the valley right by
Aamjiwnaang called the Blue Water Plaque.
It commemorates a middle class white community who was
evacuated from the area because of the unsafe living
conditions that Aamjiwnaang's residents still live with.
You're getting involved in these very important, big
issues at a young age.
What was it that first sort of drove you to try and make a
difference?
VANESSA GRAY: I've just been affected by cancer in my
family and friends and loved ones so much.
And I would like to see chemical valley exposed more
than it is now.
I'd like some more health studies to be done.
People all over can see how fucked up the situation is,
because it's something that a lot of people don't
understand, and they don't see every day.
PATRICK MCGUIRE: We went over to the reserve's well kept
baseball diamond that sits directly across from a massive
refinery to speak with Christine Rogers.
Christine is a mother of three daughters who were affected by
Shell's hydrogen sulfide leak in January of 2013--
a leak that was discovered by the staff of Aamjiwnaang's
daycare center and the children they were caring for
after they all noticed a rotten egg smell in the air.
Several children were sent to hospitals as a result.
And because Shell did not properly alert the community,
the kids were wrongfully diagnosed for having colds and
flus, when really they were suffering
hydrogen sulfide exposure.
CHRISTINE ROGERS: You feel like a failure.
PATRICK MCGUIRE: Why?
CHRISTINE ROGERS: As a parent, you do everything you can to
protect your children.
You do everything that you can to make sure that your
children are safe.
And when something like that happens, it's beyond your
control, and you just feel like you've lost control.
What if it had been a bigger spill?
You think you're prepared, but really
you're not, and I don't--
honestly, it feels helpless.
She had gotten the crusted eyes at that time, and her
eyes were bloodshot for three days.
And I had to take her to the doctor to make sure there were
no infections.
PATRICK MCGUIRE: And how do you think these industries
need to step up and how this from not happening?
CHRISTINE ROGERS: You want to operate here, then you should
have top of the line technology.
You should be putting safety above your dollars.
It's going to cost too much, it's going to cost too much.
That's what you hear all the time.
And I don't care.
I don't care how much it costs you.
That's my child safety.
They would do it if their kids lived right here.
There's a funny saying that my kids, they came up with--
you see the smoke coming out over there.
Yeah, they used to think that those were cloud makers.
PATRICK MCGUIRE: That's cute, but also--
CHRISTINE ROGERS: And I'll tell her, no
that's not a cloud.
That's pollution.
That's bad stuff that we're breathing in.
So they came up their own saying--
the more clouds in the sky, the more people will die.
As a parent, that is heartbreaking that my kids
think about where they live like that.
PATRICK MCGUIRE: I'm here outside of the Shell oil
refinery, which is one of the largest refineries in the
Chemical Valley.
The air fucking smells like gas.
And this plant alone has been responsible for three
different leaks of hydrogen sulfide in the past five
months since the beginning of 2013.
And if you're not already familiar with hydrogen
sulfide, it was actually used as a chemical weapon by the
British in World War I, so you know it's really good for you.
When oil was first discovered near Sarnia in the mid 1800s,
mass industrialization was not far away.
To support the war effort, in the early 1940s, Sarnia became
a major center for the petrochemical industry.
And from there, business began to boom.
Sarnia's proximity to the United States quickly made it
a exporting hot spot for Canadian petrochemicals.
And to meet the demands, companies were quick to buy up
land from the people Aamjiwnaang back when the
concept of environmental impact didn't really exist.
Then, during the '60s and '70s, Sarnia prospered as the
industry exploded with business.
All of a sudden, the Chemical Valley was being heralded as a
wonderfully exciting development.
Because of this, no one should be under any illusion when it
comes to the existence of the Chemical Valley.
We asked for it.
The operation of our society relies on petrochemicals.
This is an issue that all of us are responsible for.
I went to speak with Mayor Mike Bradley, who has been
running Sarnia for over 25 years, to discuss the history
of the Chemical Valley, what can be done to improve its
emissions, and the industry's impact on the people of
Aamjiwnaang and Sarnia at large.
MIKE BRADLEY: It doesn't matter where you go in North
America, you will find toxins and other things.
The question always in this community, and anyone that has
an industrial complex, is, what does the cluster do?
Health Canada came to the community and said, we're
willing to do this health study, and it's
going to cost millions.
And then within a very short period of time, they moved
remove themselves from the process.
And so, that's been the issue of, how can you fund it?
Because it is not an expensive process to make it credible.
I don't believe the study should have any money from
industry, and yet it is going to be
funded in part by industry.
PATRICK MCGUIRE: What do you think the valid reasons, if
any, are for Aamjiwnaang to mistrust
government or industry?
MIKE BRADLEY: The first oil company came here
over 100 years ago.
But what really accelerated the industry was they needed
to be on the water during the second World War.
So the big plant Polysar came here, located here.
They made rubber.
Then all the other plants came around it.
Well, the natural place to go to was where the Aamjiwnaang
reserve was.
So over the years, it's been eroded by industry and, as I
understand it, by the city.
It was just taking it away.
History hasn't been fair to the Aamjiwnaang.
There's not question of that.
But what I've been trying to do is make sure that this
generation's life will be better by doing what we can to
make sure that that relationship is more stable
than it's been in the past.
You would not do this today.
You would not locate industry close to a city.
You would not locate industry on reserve lands in the way it
was done 30, 40, 50, 60 years ago.
PATRICK MCGUIRE: We heard a lot of that a scientist named
Jim Brophy who used to work very closely with Aamjiwnaang
and the workplace victims of Chemical Valley who developed
serious health conditions from their jobs in the plants.
Jim has since been chased out of Sarnia, and
now lives in Windsor.
We went to visit Jim to discuss what the Canadian
government and the petrochemical industry need to
do to protect the people of Aamjiwnaang, and the blue
collar workforce of the Chemical Valley itself.
All right, I'm here with Dr. Jim Brophy here in Windsor.
And across the river there, we've got a three-story, tall,
one city block-long pile of petroleum coke.
Can you maybe explain what that is?
JIM BROPHY: That's the end stage of refinery process.
In that particular case, that's
bitumen tar sands crude.
PATRICK MCGUIRE: Yes, so that's
coming out from Alberta.
JIM BROPHY: And it's going to a large refinery--
Marathon refinery in southwest Detroit.
Southwest Detroit and Sarnia, Aamjiwnaang are classic
examples of environmental racism.
The whole environmental justice movement was a
response to these types of egregious, really criminal
situations where poor communities find their
neighbors are these large, industrial complexes.
And there's little or no protection from the kinds of
exposures that these people get.
So let's remember-- who is the highest populations at risk?
It's First Nations communities on the fence line.
It's blue collar industrial workers.
It's the poor, working class and poor who
live in south Sarnia.
Not the CEOs.
And it's the same in southwest Detroit,
right across from Marathon.
It's the poorest people in the city.