Hundreds of health professionals are sounding the alarm—for the third time in as many months—that Canada has never undertaken an independent health impact assessment of LNG infrastructure, as British Columbia and Canada forge ahead with plans to massively scale up the LNG industry.
The three interventions, starting with the most recent, are:
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Last week, the Canadian Association of Nurses for the Environment (CANE), the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), and groups on the frontlines of LNG development, including the Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition, sent a formal request for intervention to one of LNG Canada’s major funders, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC). It says the Japanese public financial institution and export credit agency has failed to uphold its own lending policies under international agreements relating to health, business and human rights commitments. It calls on the bank’s governor general to halt further public financing of LNG Canada and associated gas infrastructure until an independent, cumulative health impact assessment is completed.
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On November 26, the Health Officers’ Council of BC voted in support of “an independent, comprehensive health impacts assessment of the B.C. gas industry that includes cumulative impacts from fracking to export and combustion (scope 3) emissions and is adequately resourced and informed by Indigenous contexts.” The HOC includes medical health officers at B.C’s regional health authorities, physicians at the BC Centre for Disease Control, physicians practicing and public health physicians in the province.
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In September, more than 175 healthcare providers and First Nations members sent an open letter calling directly on the B.C. government to prove that LNG is safe before approving more projects, citing a growing body of peer-reviewed health research that indicates it is not.
“As a healthcare practitioner treating patients in Kitimat, Canada’s first frontline LNG export community, it’s clear to me that people living near pipeline corridors and export facilities are already facing elevated health risks,” said Ankur Patel, Registered Nurse, in Kitimat. “Before any additional financing flows, the full cumulative burden on respiratory, cardiac, and community health must be independently assessed and publicly released.”
Currently, four LNG infrastructure projects—all in British Columbia—have been referred to Ottawa’s major projects office, seeking ‘national interest’ designations. If secured, these designations would facilitate pathways to construction through expediency legislation—driving up the risk of health harms without adequate assessment or protections—and unlock new federal public financing established in Budget 2025.
“Here in the north, people are living with the combined impacts of fracking, pipelines, industrial shipping, wildfire smoke, and flooding,” said Shannon McPhail, Co-executive Director, Skeena Watershed Conservation Coalition. “Japanese financiers cannot keep pretending LNG Canada is just a plant on the coast. The real question is what this entire project means for the air, water, and lands that sustain all life in these communities.”
Physicians and nurses practising in northern British Columbia, who are among the signatories in today’s complaint to the Japanese government, warn that significant human health impacts are already occurring across the LNG supply chain in the province. They report rising concerns about more patients struggling with asthma, heart problems and other illnesses linked to polluted air.
They also raise concerns around Indigenous rights, including a lack of Free, Prior and Informed Consent from affected rights-holders. The healthcare providers further point to LNG’s role in escalating climate health impacts. They say they are attending to more heat-related illness during extreme heat events and longer wildfire seasons, as well as attending to growing anxiety and stress in communities facing repeated evacuations, smoke days and flooding.
“We need to be questioning the use of public finance to worsen health and human-rights risks, particularly for people who live with the daily impacts of LNG infrastructure and export facilities in British Columbia,” said Dr. Ulrike Meyer, family physician in Dawson Creek. “Decisions about large fossil fuel projects must consider, reflect and assess the real conditions that people, patients and communities are living in. LNG is a brand new industry in Canada and our inexperience regulating it is, unfortunately, very evident.”
