Close to 60 natural gas well sites in southern Alberta, were supposed to be cleaned up and the land was supposed to be rehabilitated once the company operating them (Aeraden Energy Corp.) stopped extracting resources from them. Instead, an Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) investigation found CEPro Energy & Environmental Services Inc. submitted site photos on Aeraden's behalf that weren’t of the wells being reclaimed and signed off on cleanups at many sites despite holes in the ground and equipment left behind.
Now, in Canada, to prove fraud, the prosecution only needs to show that there was deceit that the accused knew would potentially deprive someone else. In this case, that is very easy: submitting fake photos is deceit, plain as a day. So is signing a document that says something is clean when it is not. And it is hard to leave huge holes in the ground and equipment littering the landscape without knowing about it. The "someone else" being deprived in this case is all of us since the fraud harmed our shared environment -- an environment, mind you, that AER claims to be responsible for over the entire life cycle of resource extraction projects.
So, CEPro must have been charged, right? I mean, even if they are not punished for polluting or breaching environmental regulations, at a minimum the fraud part of this case is a slam dunk!
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| No, of course they were not charged. As Clarence Darrow once said, "A criminal is a person with predatory instincts without sufficient capital to form a corporation." So naturally the companies involved will not even face financial penalties despite the breadth and seriousness of their contraventions of Alberta’s Environmental Protection and Enhancement Act. For the lazy pricks who committed fraud while hiding behind corporate veils, prison was never contemplated. Instead, each company received a warning letter from AER, calling the matter “very serious.” What a crock of shit. |
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