Trust emerges as a fundamental cornerstone for project success.
Excluding covid restrictions in year one, two particularly concerning limitations in this project were:
1) A tailing pond seepage occurred at Kearl, the Imperial Oil, Ltd. owned facility. The Alberta provincial energy regulator withheld the seepage event information from the public and affected communities, against their policies, licenses, and impact assessment agreements, for more than 9 months. That event led to the communities asking the social science team to step away from their in-person engagement which eventually led the team to reduce sample sizes and conduct social sciences remotely.
2) Natural scientists did not consistently disclose the locations and scope of genomic engineering. When social scientists repeatedly asked, natural scientists pressed that no genetic engineering was part of this project. Yet it was discovered that bacterial biosensors were created through genetic engineering to signal when bacteria genes are exposed to toxins in water.
In “Bio-Censor” interdependent factors cycle around the person holding the biosensor, creating a sense of responsibility, the weight of monitoring their life source, with or without trust in the sensor, industry, or government transparency. Moving clockwise>> beginning with the antique school bell placed in the cattails to change “top down” colonial capitalist ways to factual and accessible education >> to inform and support independent community choice, voice, and stewardship >> whose lives depend on industries to uphold regulations and remediate tailings pond water (spewing out of pipes atop) >> to the very controversial Bill C-69, and the previous “good for Canada’s water- Bill C-68” indicating our government’s responsibility to determine and enforce fish toxicity laws and thus the level of toxins industry can release into all of Canada’s waterways. The cycle of trust can be upheld, there is a choice of using blinders or transparency.