CALGARY -- Alberta has signed an agreement with the federal government that makes major cuts to environmental monitoring of the oilsands.

The deal, a copy of which has been obtained by The Canadian Press, lays out research plans for this year's field season under a federal-provincial program that oversees all monitoring of the area outside of company leases.

Signed July 7 by top bureaucrats in Ottawa and Edmonton, it cuts funding by at least 25 per cent. The budget has been cut to no more than $44 million this year. It was $58 million last year and $60 million in 2018.

The deal says no fieldwork is to be done on the main branch of the Athabasca River. That means the program won't fund monitoring downstream of the oilsands even as the province considers proposals to allow the water from oilsands tailings ponds to be released into the river.

The deal also says there'll be no field studies on wetlands, fish or insects.

A pilot project gauging the risks posed by tailings ponds has been dropped. Water quality assessment in Wood Buffalo National Park - part of a response to international concerns about environmental degradation at the UNESCO World Heritage Site - is gone.

Under the deal, administrative costs have ballooned to more than $10 million from about $7 million last year. That means nearly one-quarter of the monitoring budget will be spent before a single data point is collected.

Ottawa said the 25 per cent reduction was not a cutback, but rather was due to social distancing protocols that were a result of the global pandemic.

The Province of Alberta said it's actually bringing spending in line with what is actually spent.

Last year’s $58 million budget, with only $52 million spent was reduced to $44 million this year.

In a statement, Alberta’s Environment and Parks said “in 2018, $60 million was budgeted, but only 86 per cent was actually spent,” said press secretary Jess Sinclair.

“The current funding amount this year is roughly in line with average actual spending from previous years," Sinclair added. "For the four years under the NDP, the average actual spend was $44.9 million.”

'No agreement'

The federal government said “there is no agreement between the Governments of Canada and Alberta to reduce oil sands monitoring.”

In a statement, Ottawa said “the decrease in the cost of monitoring for 2020-2021 reflects the suspension of some field work during the spring and summer due to COVID-19 distancing requirements, not a deliberate budgetary cut. This decision was taken by the Oil Sands Monitoring Program Oversight Committee.”

It's a committee made up of 12 people, from Ottawa, Alberta, Alberta’s energy regulator and Indigenous groups.

The shortfall in funding will result in no fieldwork being done on the main branch of the Athabasca River. That means the program won't fund monitoring downstream of the oilsands even as the province considers proposals to allow the water from oilsands tailings ponds to be released into the river.

The agreement also says there'll be no field studies on wetlands, fish or insects.

Jim Herbers of the Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute said his funding for wildlife services was cut to $1.4 million from the usual $4 million.

“We engaged both with the federal and provincial governments and Indigenous communities in the northeast and began talking about what next year looks like,” Herbers said.

“We can recover from, at least my institute can certainly recover from one year of reduced field operations.”

With a file from Bob Weber and The Canadian Press