As Canada rushes megaprojects, a mental-health crisis in the oil sands remains largely hidden

Open this photo in gallery:

Trina Moyles’s most recent book is Black Bear: A Story of Siblinghood and Survival.

In late 2025, Prime Minister Mark Carney announced an ambitious new push for megadevelopment projects, to pave the way for the faster construction of ports, mines and pipelines in Canada. There’s a collective sense of urgency in developing the country’s natural resources to achieve sovereignty from the United States. But with this urgency comes social and environmental risks, including a hidden mental-health crisis that experts say is likely to get worse.

My brother died by suicide in 2022, just shy of his 40th birthday. Anyone who knew my brother knew he preferred to call, not text, his friends and family members; he was a boisterous voice on the other end of the line as he drove the long gravel roads between oil and gas well sites in northern Alberta.

He worked most of his adult life as an operator in the oil sands, taking on weeks to month-long contracts in Peace River, Fox Lake, Red Earth Creek and Fort McMurray. My brother was a parent and hockey coach. His story is not an anomaly. In Alberta, more people die by suicide than are killed in car accidents – three out of four of those deaths are men.

In Alberta’s oil and gas industry, says Valerie O’Leary, a crisis trauma responder who worked in Fort McMurray from 2014 to 2023, suicide is often “swept under the rug” by companies. “It’s a lot more prevalent than in the news,” says Ms. O’Leary, who was hired by companies and travelled to work sites or worker’s camps to provide trauma counselling and debriefing services after incidents had occurred.

Excerpt: Two years in Alberta’s oil sands left a mark on me

In some cases, suicides that occur on-site are labelled “sudden death,” Ms. O’Leary says. In one instance, “it was clear that the person had died by suicide, and I was told by the manager, ‘You do not say the word ‘suicide.’”

There are many challenges to understanding the full extent of the crisis. The statistics of suicide are hard to quantify and track based on whether deaths occur physically on the work site, or at camp, or after workers’ shifts wrap up, or contracts are terminated. An occupational health and safety professional, who wanted to remain anonymous, told me that the challenge lies in determining whether it’s a work-related illness or injury versus a pre-existing condition. While large companies have comprehensive mental-health programs in place, smaller subcontracted companies may not. Often, it depends on the size of the company.

Suicide in Alberta’s oil and gas industry is “an open secret,” says Sara Dorow, a sociology professor and researcher at the University of Alberta who partnered with Ms. O’Leary to conduct one of the first independently conducted research projects to study workers’ mental health in the Athabasca oil sands. They initially wanted to do research directly in worker’s camps, but companies refused access, says Dr. Dorow. Instead, they advertised through worker associations and on social media, with more than 70 workers ultimately participating in the survey.

“We would hear from person after person up there,” Dr. Dorow says. “We know [suicide] happens. We just don’t want to deal with it, or talk about it.”

Open this photo in gallery:

The survey found that one in seven male participants had thoughts of harming themselves. Their research, which was published in October, 2021, also identified what Dr. Dorow calls “structural stresses,” or hardships, caused by larger organizational forces, that individual workers are burdened with. They include 12-hour shifts, or multi-week to month-long shift rotations, with few days off in between contracts. This can cause the dynamics of relationship and family to break down, says Ms. O’Leary.

“There’s a big price to pay, you know, for that kind of income, and the biggest price is you can lose contact with your family,” she says.

Workers reported cramped, yet isolating living conditions in worker’s camps. Particularly at fly-in camps, workers reported a sense of entrapment; they were simultaneously isolated while lacking privacy. The most common metaphor that research participants used to describe camp life was “prison,” says Dr. Dorow. Women face additional harms of discrimination and harassment.

A former worker, who wanted to remain anonymous, told me that she used to experience anxiety before flying to work in remote camps around Fort McMurray, and regular panic attacks while on the job. As a woman, she was the target of derogatory comments from her former supervisor. She was even spit at by a male colleague.

The dominant culture in Alberta’s oil sands, Dr. Dorow says, is that with the “right attitude” workers can survive the stressful conditions. “To ask people to have individual resilience is great, but not if you don’t have systems [in place] that are trying to mitigate the mental-health impacts.”

Most workers in the oil sands aren’t permanent employees with sick and vacation days, or benefits, but contractors living shift to shift, Dr. Dorow points out. There’s uncertainty of whether or not they’ll get hired back on, or if there’ll be a major downturn and then layoffs.

“After a gig, people are waiting for the next call,” says Darrel Comeau, a welder who’s worked in the oil and gas industry in the Grande Prairie area over the past 20 years.

Open this photo in gallery:

Mr. Comeau says that it can easily become an addictive lifestyle with workers earning large paycheques, coming off long shifts and engaging in “retail therapy,” and then waiting to get called back by an oil field staffing company – informally referred to as a “pimping agency” in the industry, he says.

There’s a mentality that workers are “family,” says Mr. Comeau. But once the job is done, the company doesn’t need the workers. “It’s a transactional relationship,” he says. Working on megadevelopment projects, including oil and gas sites, pipelines, or mines should come with the kind of warning you find on a box of cigarettes, he says. Mr. Comeau has watched colleagues struggle with mental-health issues and addiction over the years. Some companies provide counselling, or psychological support in the way of “1-800 numbers” for workers to call, he says. “But what is that doing while you’re still in the toxic environment? It’s more or less a stopgap measure to keep the labour going.”

Dr. Dorow’s research found that 49 per cent of participants indicated that they wouldn’t seek mental- or physical-health supports while on the job for fear of stigma and professional consequences, including not being hired back on. As one participant told the researchers: “Taking time off work when you’re sick is the fast track to being laid off.” This cultural mindset, one that prizes productivity above all else, including mental and physical safety, continues to prevail within the oil sands, the study found.

What science tells us about kindness, healing and helping each other through trauma

Ms. O’Leary says companies need to invest more in counselling, mentorship, and peer-support programming. She’d like to see weekly drop-in support groups for workers to debrief.

“You need to mentor up these young guys coming in with an older person who can say there’s this roller coaster in the oil sands,” she says. “When things are great, they’re wonderful, but when they dive you have to have a cushion to hold you over till it comes back up.”

Mr. Comeau cautions that seasoned workers themselves may not have the skills needed to provide meaningful support. He’d rather see guidance from professional institutions versus in-house health and safety personnel who “may not be qualified.”

For Dr. Dorow, the changes need to be structural in order to address the underlying causes of the mental-health crisis in the industry, including policy around month-long rotations, which can have negative effects on workers and their family lives. She points to policy changes in Australia in remote mining camps, where companies are shortening and shifting rotations so that they’re more sustainable. “They’re actually taking into account a person’s life,” she says. Australia, she adds, is “light-years ahead of Canada” in terms of research and implementing policy changes to improve worker health.

One of the biggest roadblocks to research and improving conditions for worker’s health, Dr. Dorow says, is Alberta’s cultural sense of “petro-citizenship” – a “you’re either with us, or against us” mentality. This defensive mindset, she adds, often hinders the sector’s ability to identify challenges and address them. She also points to a similar resistance when it comes to confronting environmental concerns.

Open this photo in gallery:

But a gradual shift seems to be under way in the industry, says Dr. Dorow. Last year, she and Ms. O’Leary presented their research to industry and other stakeholders at a conference in Fort McMurray on mental health in the oil sands – the first of its kind in Alberta.

And Mr. Comeau, too, has recognized a shift in the industry amongst some companies that are taking mental health into consideration, though he concedes it’s not going to happen overnight.

In the wake of Canada’s push for megadevelopment projects, however, the stakes are high. With major pipelines, ports, and mining projects looming on Canada’s agenda, there’s a sense of urgency that will come with social costs, says Ms. O’Leary.

“With what’s happening in the world, they’re not looking at the consequences that will come with it,” she says. “The approach needs to be slower … it’s getting better, but unfortunately, it always boils down to money.”

Money is one thing the oil and gas industry arguably does have. According to the Alberta Energy Regulator there was record-breaking growth in oil production in 2025 – more than doubling in output since 2010. This raises the question: Is the mental-health crisis really about money, or will?