They came to protest pipelines; they stayed to eat samosas, drink chai and chat with B.C. NDP leader Adrian Dix.

More than 50 people politely and quietly demonstrated outside the MLA’s Vancouver-Kingsway constituency office as part of the wider “Defend Our Coast” protests across the Lower Mainland Wednesday.

With signs reading “No Gateway to global warming” and “Stop the Kinder Morgan pipeline,” the gathering organized by the Wilderness Committee tried to convince Dix – who was invited well in advance – to take a harder stance against the doubling of the Kinder Morgan pipeline.

The Wilderness Committee’s Ben West called Kinder Morgan “smart” and “sneaky,” adding that tanker traffic has increased drastically because of its shipments.

While Dix invited everyone inside and spoke with protesters at length in his crammed office, he would not take further steps against Kinder Morgan because it has yet to file a regulatory application. (The company plans to twin the pipeline it already runs through densely populated regions in the province.)

But Dix did reiterate his intention, should the NDP win the May election, to pull out of the Enbridge pipeline’s federal environmental review process and conduct an environmental assessment in B.C.

The same made-in-B.C. review would apply to Kinder Morgan, he said.

“This issue is going to be decided in B.C.,” Dix said.

Dix also claimed the Enbridge pipeline is not in B.C.’s economic or environmental interest, whereas the company says B.C. will earn $1.2 billion in tax revenue from the project over 30 years.