Editor’s note: Dr. Chris Arsenault gave this speech at a rally in support of renewable energy and against fossil gas development at the New Brunswick Legislature on October 20.
I’m Dr. Chris Arsenault, I’m a family doctor here in Fredericton, and I am mad. I’m mad because I’m here today speaking instead of looking after my patients.
Because of the threat this government’s plans posed to our health, we in health care in this province are barely keeping our heads above water. And the government’s proposed Sisson Mine, Tantramar gas plant, Lorneville data centre and worst of all reopening fracking will worsen the problem by adding more sickness to an already overburdened system.
Let’s talk about fracking. Recently, I met with doctors in rural BC whose communities have undergone extensive fracking in the last 20 years. They are seeing drastically higher rates of heart and lung disease, worsened pregnancy outcomes, and higher rates of childhood cancers.
I witness the suffering caused by those illnesses in my practice every day. No economic argument should take precedence over the suffering of our neighbours, our friends, and our family. No cheque is worth giving a kid cancer.
In 2012, Dr. Eilish Cleary, our Chief Medical Officer of Health, issued a scientifically rigorous report on fracking’s health impacts, which was instrumental in securing our fracking moratorium. Industry and even government will argue that technology has come a long way since then, that modern fracking is safer, but this is not true and there are no studies to support that claim.
In fact, the recent fracking studies from BC and the States show worse outcomes compared to prior studies. But the province doesn’t know this. After Dr. Cleary’s report, her Department of Health was systematically dismantled, with 70 of her 110 staff being moved to other departments.
And subsequent chief medical officers of health no longer have the capacity to create a similar report. They have been disempowered by these changes. Currently, there is one person in the New Brunswick Department of Health responsible for environmental health.
It is impossible to understand and act on the complexity of environmental public health with such limited resources. The government doesn’t know the risks they’re exposing us to. They don’t even know what they don’t know because they dismantled their own means of learning about it.
And this is willful ignorance. We cannot let this government or any government ignore our health. Green alternatives exist and won’t make us sick. In a recent vote, New Brunswick doctors approved a motion opposing fossil fuel development in New Brunswick to protect our health, with 72 per cent voting in favour and only 12 per cent against.
Yet this province is on track to keep worsening climate change, which the World Health Organization identifies as the greatest threat facing humanity. No industry with these kinds of risks can be allowed to go forward, certainly not while our Department of Health is completely unable to understand or reduce those risks. The Department of Health must be rebuilt to protect us from the harms of climate change and industrial development. Until that is done, we don’t even know the harms this government is allowing to take place.
To protect us all, the Sisson Mine, Tantramar gas plant, and the Lorneville data centre must be put on hold and given full health impact assessments.
To protect us all, the fracking moratorium must stand. Thank you.
Dr. Chris Arsenault is a family doctor in Fredericton and co-chair of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment New Brunswick committee (CAPE NB).
A version of this speech was published by the Telegraph-Journal on Nov. 2, 2026.
![Doctors warn of fracking’s ‘unacceptable health risks.’ Where do the political parties stand? [video]](https://nbmediacoop.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Fracking_Site_in_Warren_Center_PA_08-350x250.jpeg)
