Queen Charlotte gains provincial support for anti-pipeline stand
By Heather Ramsay
BC’s municipalities have voted resoundingly in favour of Queen Charlotte’s anti-Enbridge resolutions at the Union of BC Municipalities conference in Whistler.
On Sept. 30, Queen Charlotte councillors brought forward two resolutions: one was for UBCM to petition the federal government to establish a bulk crude oil traffic moratorium and the other was to oppose tar sands oil being shipped in pipelines across Northern BC.
Mayor Carol Kulesha, who was at the conference last week, said with 600 delegates in the room, around 70 per cent voted in favour of the village’s resolutions. She and councillor Leslie Johnson stood together at the front of the room, while councillor Johnson presented their case.
“There is too much risk and this is the wrong place to put our money and our hopes and dreams,” they told the delegates.
She was awed by the response. “I thought it would be a much harder sell,” she said from the bus that brought the councillors back to Vancouver from the Whistler conference.
“We may have brought this up,” she said. “But we are not speaking against the majority.” A wave of opposition to the project has spread across BC, and the delegates who voted to approve the resolutions were representing these people, she said.
According to recent surveys, 80 percent of British Columbians oppose tankers on the north coast and 50 percent oppose the Enbridge oil pipeline.
She admits that a lot of hope is being pinned on the jobs that may be stimulated by Enbridge, and she said her council did not take putting these resolutions forward lightly. But a $2.6 billion economy reliant on seafood, tourism and recreation is at stake, plus 48,000 province-wide jobs.
“We believe we need to protect the marine ecosystem that sustains our culture,” she said.
Queen Charlotte councillors painted a picture of 225 tankers per year passing through the rugged and remote coastline where 24 foot tides are common, as are hurricane force winds. “Oil and water don’t mix,” she said. This was proven in Alaska 20 years ago, where communities are still reeling from the Exxon Valdez disaster, and again in the Gulf of Mexico.
“No amount of safety or rehabilitative measures are adequate to the task,” she said. The United States, which has access to far more money, people and resources, could not protect two of their coastlines from devastating oil spills, she said.
“If we want change, we need to do more than talk about alternative energy, we need to make it difficult for the same old approach to keep working,” she said.
North Coast MLA Gary Coons, who was also at the convention, said he was ecstatic at the results. A lot of hard work, educating and lobbying was done to not only get the resolutions on the floor, but to have them passed with so little resistance.
“Kris Olsen deserves so much credit for bringing forward the notion of a legislated ban on crude oil takers in our northern waters,” he said. Mr. Olsen, a Queen Charlotte councillor, was unable to attend the conference as he was acting-mayor in the village at the time.
“It is now time for both federal and provincial governments to listen to British Columbians and their duly elected municipal leaders and stop this insane project,” he said.
Skeena-Bulkley Valley MP Nathan Cullen was also pleased at hearing the news. “The momentum against Enbridge is steamrolling,” Mr. Cullen said. “With the addition of municipal leaders to the ranks opposing Enbridge, the argument for a pipeline across northern BC is essentially over.”
Enbridge spokesperson Alan Roth said the Joint Review Panel may be surprised to hear that. He said whether a project goes ahead is decided by the regulatory review process, not by people who oppose a project. “That’s how Canadian society makes decisions about large energy projects,” he said.
He understands that some people have concerns about the project, but he believes that concerns will decrease over the two year regulatory process.
“They will realize [their concerns] are not as significant as they feel they are at the present time,” he said.
Mr. Roth said pipelines are the safest way to transport petroleum products and the company’s marine safety program goes to “extraordinary lengths” to address risks and try to eliminate them. He said their risk assessment shows there is only a one in 15,000 years chance of a major spill (252,000 barrels).
Metchosin’s resolution to maintain the federal moratorium on offshore oil exploration also passed at the conference.