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The world's largest and most devastating

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environmental and industrial project

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is situated in the heart

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of the largest and most intact forest in the world,

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Canada's boreal forest.

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It stretches right across northern Canada, in Labrador,

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it's home to the largest remaining wild caribou herd

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in the world, the George River caribou herd,

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numbering approximately 400,000 animals.

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Unfortunately, when I was there I couldn't find one of them,

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but you have the antlers as proof.

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All across the boreal, we're blessed with this

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incredible abundance of wetlands.

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Wetlands globally are one of the most endangered ecosystems.

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They're absolutely critical ecosystems,

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they clean air, they clean water,

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they sequester large amounts of greenhouse gases,

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and they're home to a huge diversity of species.

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In the boreal, they are also the home where

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almost 50 percent of the 800 bird species

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found in North America migrate north to breed and raise their young.

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In Ontario, the boreal marches down south

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to the north shore of Lake Superior.

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And these incredibly beautiful boreal forests

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were the inspiration for some of the most famous art

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in Canadian history, the Group of Seven were very inspired

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by this landscape,

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and so the boreal is not just a really key part of our

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natural heritage,

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but also an important part of our cultural heritage.

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In Manitoba, this is an image from the east side of Lake Winnipeg,

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and this is the home of the newly designated

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UNESCO Cultural Heritage site.

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In Saskatchewan, as across all of the boreal,

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home to some of our most famous rivers,

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an incredible network of rivers and lakes

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that every school-age child learns about,

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the Peace, the Athabasca, the Churchill here, the Mackenzie,

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and these networks were the historical routes

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for the voyageur and the coureur des bois,

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the first non-Aboriginal explorers of northern Canada

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that, taking from the First Nations people,

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used canoes and paddled to explore

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for a trade route, a Northwest Passage for the fur trade.

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In the North, the boreal is bordered by the tundra,

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and just below that, in Yukon,

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we have this incredible valley, the Tombstone Valley.

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And the Tombstone Valley is home to the Porcupine caribou herd.

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Now you've probably heard about the Porcupine caribou herd

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in the context of its breeding ground

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in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

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Well, the wintering ground is also critical

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and it also is not protected,

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and is potentially, could be potentially, exploited

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for gas and mineral rights.

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The western border of the boreal in British Columbia

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is marked by the Coast Mountains,

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and on the other side of those mountains

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is the greatest remaining temperate rainforest in the world,

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the Great Bear Rainforest,

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and we'll discuss that in a few minutes in a bit more detail.

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All across the boreal, it's home for a huge

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incredible range of indigenous peoples,

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and a rich and varied culture.

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And I think that one of the reasons why

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so many of these groups have retained a link to the past,

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know their native languages,

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the songs, the dances, the traditions,

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I think part of that reason is because of the remoteness,

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the span and the wilderness

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of this almost 95 percent intact ecosystem.

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And I think particularly now,

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as we see ourselves in a time of environmental crisis,

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we can learn so much from these people

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who have lived so sustainably in this ecosystem

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for over 10,000 years.

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In the heart of this ecosystem is the very antithesis

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of all of these values that we've been talking about,

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and I think these are some of the core values

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that make us proud to be Canadians.

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This is the Alberta tar sands,

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the largest oil reserves on the planet

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outside of Saudi Arabia.

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Trapped underneath the boreal forest

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and wetlands of northern Alberta

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are these vast reserves of this sticky, tar-like bitumen.

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And the mining and the exploitation of that

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is creating devastation on a scale that the planet has never seen before.

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I want to try to convey some sort of a sense of the size of this.

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If you look at that truck there,

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it is the largest truck of its kind of the planet.

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It is a 400-ton-capacity dump truck

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and its dimensions are 45 feet long

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by 35 feet wide and 25 feet high.

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If I stand beside that truck,

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my head comes to around the bottom

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of the yellow part of that hubcap.

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Within the dimensions of that truck,

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you could build a 3,000-square-foot two-story home

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quite easily. I did the math.

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So instead of thinking of that as a truck,

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think of that as a 3,000-square-foot home.

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That's not a bad size home.

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And line those trucks/homes back and forth

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across there from the bottom

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all the way to the top.

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And then think of how large that very small section of one mine is.

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Now, you can apply that same kind of thinking

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here as well.

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Now, here you see -- of course, as you go further on,

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these trucks become like a pixel.

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Again, imagine those all back and forth there.

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How large is that one portion of a mine?

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That would be a huge, vast metropolitan area,

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probably much larger than the city of Victoria.

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And this is just one of a number of mines,

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10 mines so far right now.

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This is one section of one mining complex,

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and there are about another 40 or 50 in the approval process.

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No tar sands mine has actually ever been denied approval,

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so it is essentially a rubber stamp.

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The other method of extraction is what's called the in-situ.

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And here, massive amounts of water

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are super-heated and pumped through the ground,

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through these vasts networks of pipelines,

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seismic lines, drill paths, compressor stations.

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And even though this looks maybe not quite as repugnant

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as the mines, it's even more damaging in some ways.

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It impacts and fragments a larger part of the wilderness,

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where there is 90 percent reduction of key species,

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like woodland caribou and grizzly bears,

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and it consumes even more energy, more water,

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and produces at least as much greenhouse gas.

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So these in-situ developments are at least as

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ecologically damaging as the mines.

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The oil produced from either method

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produces more greenhouse gas emissions than any other oil.

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This is one of the reasons why it's called

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the world's dirtiest oil.

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It's also one of the reasons why it is

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the largest and fastest-growing single source

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of carbon in Canada,

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and it is also a reason why Canada is now number three

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in terms of producing carbon per person.

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The tailings ponds are the largest toxic impoundments on the planet.

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Oil sands -- or rather I should say tar sands --

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"oil sands" is a P.R.-created term

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so that the oil companies wouldn't be trying to promote

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something that sounds like a sticky tar-like substance

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that's the world's dirtiest oil.

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So they decided to call it oil sands.

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The tar sands consume more water than any other oil process,

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three to five barrels of water are taken, polluted

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and then returned into tailings ponds,

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the largest toxic impoundments on the planet.

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SemCrude, just one of the licensees,

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in just one of their tailings ponds,

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dumps 250,000 tons of this toxic gunk every single day.

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That's creating the largest toxic impoundments

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in the history of the planet.

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So far, this is enough toxin

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to cover the face of Lake Eerie a foot deep.

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And the tailings ponds range in size up to 9,000 acres.

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That's two-thirds the size of the entire island of Manhattan.

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That's like from Wall Street at the southern edge of Manhattan

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up to maybe 120th Street.

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So this is an absolutely --

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this is one of the larger tailings ponds.

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This might be, what? I don't know, half the size of Manhattan.

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And you can see in the context,

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it's just a relatively small section

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of one of 10 mining complexes and another 40 to 50

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on stream to be approved soon.

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And of course, these tailings ponds --

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well, you can't see many ponds from outer space

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and you can see these, so maybe we should stop calling them ponds --

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these massive toxic wastelands are built

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unlined and on the banks of the Athabasca River.

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And the Athabasca River drains downstream

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to a range of Aboriginal communities.

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In Fort Chippewa, the 800 people there,

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are finding toxins in the food chain,

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this has been scientifically proven.

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The tar sands toxins are in the food chain,

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and this is causing cancer rates

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up to 10 times what they are in the rest of Canada.

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In spite of that, people have to live,

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have to eat this food in order to survive.

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The incredibly high price

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of flying food into these remote Northern Aboriginal communities

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and the high rate of unemployment

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makes this an absolute necessity for survival.

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And not that many years ago, I was lent a boat by a First Nations man.

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And he said, "When you go out on the river,

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do not under any circumstances eat the fish.

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It's carcinogenic."

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And yet, on the front porch of that man's cabin,

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I saw four fish. He had to feed his family to survive.

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And as a parent, I just can't imagine what that does to your soul.

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And that's what we're doing.

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The boreal forest is also

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perhaps our best defense against global warming and climate change.

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The boreal forest sequesters more carbon

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than any other terrestrial ecosystem.

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And this is absolutely key.

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So what we're doing is,

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we're taking the most concentrated greenhouse gas sink,

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twice as much greenhouse gases are sequestered in

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the boreal per acre than the tropical rainforests.

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And what we're doing is we're destroying

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this carbon sink, turning it into a carbon bomb.

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And we're replacing that with the largest

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industrial project in the history of the world,

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which is producing the most high-carbon

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greenhouse gas emitting oil in the world.

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And we're doing this on the second largest

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oil reserves on the planet.

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This is one of the reasons why Canada,

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originally a climate change hero --

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we were one of the first signatories of the Kyoto Accord.

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Now we're the country that has full-time lobbyists

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in the European Union and Washington, D.C.

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threatening trade wars when these countries

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talk about wanting to bring in positive legislation

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to limit the import of high-carbon fuels,

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of greenhouse gas emissions, anything like this,

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at international conferences,

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whether they're in Copenhagen or Cancun,

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international conferences on climate change,

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we're the country that gets the dinosaur award

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every single day as being the biggest obstacle

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to progress on this issue.

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Just 70 miles downstream

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is the world's largest freshwater delta,

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the Peace-Athabasca Delta,

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the only one at the juncture of all four migratory flyways.

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This is a globally significant wetland,

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perhaps the greatest on the planet.

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Incredible habitat for half the bird species

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you find in North America, migrating here.

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And also the last refuge for the largest herd of wild bison,

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and also, of course, critical habitat for another whole range of other species.

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But it too is being threatened by the massive amount

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of water being drawn from the Athabasca,

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which feeds these wetlands,

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and also the incredible toxic burden

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of the largest toxic unlined impoundments on the planet,

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which are leaching in to the food chain

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for all the species downstream.

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So as bad as all that is, things are going to get

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much worse, much, much worse.

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This is the infrastructure as we see it about now.

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This is what's planned for 2015.

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And you can see here the Keystone Pipeline,

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which would take tar sands raw down to the Gulf Coast,

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punching a pipeline through the heart,

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the agricultural heart of North America, of the United States,

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and securing the contract with the dirtiest fuel in the world

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by consumption of the United States,

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and promoting a huge disincentive

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to a sustainable clean energy future for America.

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Here you see the route down the Mackenzie Valley.

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This would put a pipeline to take natural gas

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from the Beaufort Sea through the heart

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of the third largest watershed basin in the world,

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and the only one which is 95 percent intact.

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And building a pipeline with an industrial highway

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would change forever this incredible wilderness,

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which is a true rarity on the planet today.

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So the Great Bear Rainforest is just over

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the hill there, within a few miles we go from these

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dry boreal forests of 100-year-old trees,

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maybe 10 inches across,

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and soon we're in the coastal temperate rainforest,

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rain-drenched, 1,000-year-old trees,

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20 feet across, a completely different ecosystem.

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And the Great Bear Rainforest is generally considered

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to be the largest coastal temperate rainforest

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ecosystem in the world.

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Some of the greatest densities of,

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some of the most iconic and threatened species on the planet,

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and yet there's a proposal, of course, to build a pipeline

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to take huge tankers, 10 times the size of the Exxon Valdez,

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through some of the most difficult to navigate waters in the world,

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where only just a few years ago,

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a B.C. ferry ran aground.

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When one of these tar sands tankers,

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carrying the dirtiest oil, 10 times as much as the Exxon Valdez,

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eventually hits a rock and goes down,

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we're going to have one of the worst ecological disasters

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this planet has ever seen.

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And here we have the plan out to 2030.

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What they're proposing is an almost four-times increase in production,

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and that would industrialize an area the size of Florida.

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In doing so, we'll be removing

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a large part of our greatest carbon sink

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and replacing it with the most high greenhouse gas

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emission oil in the future.

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The world does not need any more tar mines.

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The world does not need any more pipelines

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to wed our addiction to fossil fuels.

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And the world certainly does not need

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the largest toxic impoundments to grow and multiply

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and further threaten the downstream communities.

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And let's face it, we all live downstream

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in an era of global warming and climate change.

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What we need, is we all need to act

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to ensure that Canada respects

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the massive amounts of freshwater

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that we hold in this country.

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We need to ensure that these wetlands and forests

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that are our best and greatest and most critical

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defense against global warming are protected,

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and we are not releasing that carbon bomb into the atmosphere.

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And we need to all gather together

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and say no to the tar sands.

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And we can do that. There is a huge network

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all over the world fighting to stop this project.

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And I quite simply think that this is not

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something that should be decided just in Canada.

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Everyone in this room, everyone across Canada,

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everyone listening to this presentation has a role to play

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and, I think, a responsibility.

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Because what we do here

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is going to change our history,

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it's going to color our possibility to survive,

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and for our children to survive

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and have a rich future.

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We have an incredible gift in the boreal,

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an incredible opportunity to preserve

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our best defense against global warming,

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but we could let that slip away.

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The tar sands could threaten

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not just a large section of the boreal.

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It compromises the life and the health

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of some of our most underprivileged and vulnerable people,

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the Aboriginal communities that have so much to teach us.

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It could destroy the Athabasca Delta,

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the largest and possibly greatest freshwater delta in the planet.

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It could destroy the Great Bear Rainforest,

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the largest temperate rainforest in the world.

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And it could have huge impacts

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on the future of the agricultural heartland of North America.

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I hope that you will all, if you've been moved by this presentation,

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join with the growing international community

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to get Canada to step up to its responsibilities,

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to convince Canada to go back to being a climate change champion

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instead of a climate change villain,

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and to say no to the tar sands,

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and yes to a clean energy future for all.

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Thank you so much.

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(Applause)