Protecting Atlantic Canada from Fracking and Expanding Oil and Gas Projects
Sign the Declaration!
Opening up this region to fracking and more fossil fuel projects threatens human health, safe drinking water, and progress we’ve made to bring climate emissions down. Add your voice now. You can also call your MLA and councillors.
Cost of Gas Fired Electricity VS. Renewables
Fracked gas is a much more expensive source of energy than wind, solar, storage and efficiency measures. In areas of high energy poverty, fracked gas will only make energy more expensive. (look up info from Jim Stanford on inflation and Clean AIr Alliance in Ont on costs of gas versus other sources).
For almost a decade, all four provinces in Atlantic Canada have been protected from fracking through legislation or regulatory measures. This hard won protection is under threat, as leaders across Canada struggle to meet times of greater economic and political uncertainty, and we’re witnessing a shift to more right-leaning politics overall.
We need to protect water, our health, and climate progress from being fracked, and support solutions that will serve us, not industry.
What the Frack?
Fracking or hydraulic fracturing uses a concoction of large volumes of water, sand and toxic chemicals to blast under high pressure into rock deep underground to extract methane (also referred to as so-called natural gas) and oil.
It’s a Gas, Gas, Gas …
Fracked gas is the major source of fuel, supplying 89-90% for gas plants and LNG facilities in North America. This means gas and LNG projects rely on expanding fracking, pipelines, and othekkr fossil fuel infrastructure which will be in place for decades.
When fracked gas is burned to generate electricity, it produces carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas. But even before it is burned, fracked gas increases global warming by leaks of methane – a greenhouse gas that is over 80 times more powerful at heating the planet than carbon dioxide. Research on leaks of methane from fracking wells, pipelines to feed LNG plants has shown that leaks of methane makes LNG worse for climate change than coal.
We are all Treaty People
Treaties signed between European settlers and the nations of the Wabanaki Confederacy (Mi’kmaq, Wolastoqey, Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, and Abenaki) did not cede land or rights. They did however, commit both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people to living in peace and friendship in this region.
Indigenous leaders across Atlantic Canada have repeatedly spoken out against fracking. Over the last two years, Chiefs in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have condemned moves to lift fracking bans in those provinces without their consent. The Mi’kmaq Grassroots Grandmothers forcefully condemned efforts to subsidize the building of an LNG plant in Goldboro, Nova Scotia and successfully mobilized communities across Nova Scotia to protect the Shubenacadie River from gas caverns to store natural gas.
What’s At Stake?
Fracking and natural gas threaten clean water, human health, and our communities in a variety of ways.
Clean Water
Fracking fluids often partially remain underground, where they put groundwater at risk. The island of PEI is 100% reliant on groundwater for drinking water. Forty percent of households in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick rely on private wells. Cancer-causing chemicals, radioactive materials and heavy metals used in fracking or released from rocks by fracking put people at risk of health impacts ranging from rashes to cancer. The chemicals used in fracking are considered “proprietary” or trade secrets so communities often don’t know what exactly fracking companies are using unless they investigate themselves.
Your Health
Toxins are released into the air, water, and land around fracking sites. According to the Canadian Association for Physicians for the Environment (CAPE), fracking increases the risk of pre-term births, low birth weight, congenital defects, childhood asthma, and leukemia. They also point to a 2022 study showing that children living near fracking sites had 2-3 times higher odds of developing acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
Protect Our Climate Progress
The global scientific community has been clear that no new fossil fuels should be extracted if we want to achieve our climate goals.
In Atlantic Canada, we have made efforts to increase the efficiency of our homes, made efforts to reduce coal and oil for electricity, and invested in making our cars, trucks, and businesses cleaner. Each Atlantic province has brought down GHG emissions since 2005 – with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick reducing climate pollution by about 40% between 2005 and 2023. More needs to be done to do our part in halting the worst impacts of climate change like hurricanes, flooding, and wildfires – but we can’t put all of this hard work in jeopardy by allowing fracking and gas plants.
We would also be wasting limited government resources and research on expanding the fossil fuel industry at a time when communities and individuals need support for renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and energy storage – and to respond to climate emergencies.
For more information, please visit:
Call to Action
Fracking threatens clean water, clean air, and our commitment to act on climate change.
Atlantic Canadians stood up to companies wishing to frack in the region ten years ago. Unfortunately, like with many environmental issues, the threat fracking never really goes away. New Brunwickers voted out a government wishing to open up that province to fracking in 2024. Unfortunately, in spite of never raising the issue of fracking with voters in their provincial election, the Nova Scotia government passed a law lifting the bans on fracking and uranium mining in the province on March 29, 2025.
Almost without exception, presentations made by the public regarding the bill lifting the on fracking opposed fracking and uranium mining.
The Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia and the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaw Chiefs have issued a powerful statement reiterating their opposition to fracking .
“The Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia and the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaw Chiefs continue to remain opposed to hydraulic fracturing and will not see it happen on our unceded and traditional territory.”
The Nova Scotia government is actively seeking support from municipal leaders to lifting the ban on fracking.
If local water sources are contaminated or depleted, if roads are torn up by oil industry trucks, or if the fracking industry does not clean up its mess, municipalities could be left holding the bag.
We all lose if residents and workers experience the health impacts of fracking reported in other places where fracking has taken place.
Go Local!
Local grassroot opposition succeeded in pushing back against fracking ten years ago, and we need to make sure we succeed again.
Please continue to reach out to your municipal leaders, write Letters to the Editor, and show up at municipal council meetings to let your leaders know that fracking has no place in your town or county.
Even though the Nova Scotia government is not listening, public opposition shows the industry that fracking will not easily go ahead in Nova Scotia.