Muskrat Falls Hydroelectric Project Poses Risks for Canada that are Being Ignored

September saw the scheduled flooding at the Muskrat Falls hydroelectric facility in Labrador, with the first power from the facility set to start this fall. The $12.7 billion provincial investment in green energy has driven Newfoundland and Labrador to the verge of bankruptcy and made a global exhibition of Canada’s natural resource development. Too often the impacts on Indigenous Peoples are treated as afterthoughts.

The province has spent the past 10 years refusing to engage the Labrador Inuit over their credible concerns of health impacts from the hydroelectric project. It has ignored both the available scientific evidence and the recommendations of an independent committee it itself created.