Our Canadian Pacific coast is a beautiful and diverse eco-system teaming with life. From our iconic schools of spawning sockeye salmon to the majestic killer whales the coast line of BC is a treasure that belong to all of us. This special place could be forever scarred if just one mistake leads to an oil spill.
On Thursday December 1 at 6:30 pm watch "The Tar Sands Stop Here" a Historic Event
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For decades the Trans Mountain pipeline from Alberta has provided most of the oil we use in BC but in 2005 Kinder Morgan bought the pipeline with the goal to transform our inlet into a major tar sands shipping port.
Very quietly in 2007, around the same time the pipeline was accidentally ruptured and leaked into the inlet, a risk assesment panel made up of industry insiders began the process of allowing bigger tankers in our waters. In 2008 the TMX1 project increased the pipelines capacity by 50,000 barrels a day to increase exports. Our pacific coast is now increasingly threatened by a major oil spill but there was no public process or debate in the house of commons or anywhere else.
As we were all still reeling from the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico little did we know every week 1 or 2 tankers were passing through the Burrard inlet carrying more than 3 times more crude oil than was spilled by the Exxon Valdez. If that isn't bad enough now Kinder Morgan wants to increase the capacity of the pipeline up to 700,000 barrels a day and get up to around 300 giant oil tankers a year moving through our inlet.
Also at the same the proposed Enbridge gateway pipeline poses a massive new threat to pristine areas across central BC including the Great Bear rainforest. The pipeline would bring over 500,000 of crude oil from the tar sands in Alberta to super tankers in Kitimat, BC. Ofcourse an oil spill anywhere on our coast could be devastating.
Oil spills in France, Mexico and elsewhere decades ago show us clearly that oil continues to contaminate the marine environment 30 years later and will likely continue for a century or more. So many of us have struggled to protect our communities from dangerous toxins, all that is at risk if we don’t take action to ban oil tankers.
Canada’s good name is being spoiled by expanding the export of dirty tar sands oil while we all stuggle to face the challenges of global warming. The world needs us to transition away from fossil fuels yet these oil exports are part of a ramping up of oil extraction from the tar sands. Instead of playing a leadership role in doing something to halt run away climate change the Canadian government is giving the green light to big oil companies to put their foot on the accelerator. The time is now for Canada to live up to its responsibility to be a good global citizen. We know that Canada must do better.
Together we can turn this ship around and get on coarse to a coastline safe from an oil spill and a global climate safe for everyone.
