Billy-Joe Tuccaro

Following years of advocacy and struggle, Indigenous nations downstream of the oilsands have received funding to understand the diseases they argue are a direct cause of the fossil fuel industry.

More than three decades after Indigenous leaders in northern Alberta began asking for funding to better understand if pollution from the oilsands was making their people sick, the federal government is funding a study to do just that.

Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault has repeated his call for a stronger federal presence when it comes to environmental monitoring and communications in the oilsands, following a pair of wastewater releases from Imperial Oil's Kearl mine in Alberta.