Newly installed United Conservative Party leader Jason Kenney’s vow to impose “...retaliatory measures if the province's NDP government is successful in blocking the (Trans Mountain) project from going ahead” is nothing more than opportunistic, divisive, and unimaginative politics totalling lacking in vision and the national interest.
His threat, if elected, of a retaliatory trade war with B.C. if the Trans Mountain pipeline does not proceed solves nothing.
Kinder Morgan recently wrote a letter to the National Energy Board asking that the NEB override City of Burnaby bylaws so that construction of the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion can proceed.
Burnaby Mayor Derek Corrigan has said he's “ready to get arrested to stop this (the Trans Mountain expansion)” – echoing, and standing up for, widespread community sentiment especially in B.C.’s Lower Mainland and Islands.
Neither the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, or UCP Leader Kenney, have the moral right or social licence to ram a pipeline down the throats of the citizens of B.C.’s Lower Mainland and Islands, who, by helping elect an NDP government that vowed to use “every tool in the book to stop it” have spoken in clear opposition.
However, with hearings of multiple lawsuits by opponents recently conducted by the Federal Court of Appeal, the legal right to ram the pipeline and marine terminal through may soon not exist at all.
The decision to approve the Trans Mountain expansion was a self-serving political decision by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau so that he would not have to approve Energy East and lose seats in Quebec. As such, it was not based on objective evaluation of the national interest. Nor was it based on technical competence – Justin Trudeau dropped out of engineering studies at Montreal’s École Polytechnique and failed to complete a
master’s degree in environmental geography at McGill.
Premier Rachel Notley is complicit in this strategy as evidenced by her lack of any significant response or action to Energy East’s cancellation.
There is a far better, co-operative way forward to access West Coast tide water and new markets in a safe, efficient, and environmentally-responsible way that also benefits First Nations and is in everyone’s best interests. Such a way forward appears to be far beyond the grasp and ken of our current crop of political leaders.
The national interest, and that of Alberta, B.C., First Nations, the oil and gas industry, and environmentalists is best served by a First Nations-led multi-pipeline, multi-energy corridor from the oil sands and Alberta’s Industrial Heartland to Prince Rupert, B.C.
A 48-inch oil pipeline in the proposed Eagle Spirit energy corridor would carry two million bbl/d – as much oil as the defunct Energy East pipeline and the proposed twinned Trans Mountain pipelines together.
The corridor would run through Peace Region hydropower developments with potential to supply low-carbon hydropower for LNG plants, shale developments, and even the oil sands. It would also run through the heart of massive shale oil, gas, and gas liquids developments in northwest Alberta and northeast B.C. And it would provide the first high-capacity link between the Alberta and B.C. power grids and create the northwestern
end of a coast-to-coast energy corridor.
Prince Rupert is by far the safest location for marine terminals on Canada’s West Coast and is the closest to new, lucrative markets for oil, LNG and value-added products in southeast Asia. LNG will displace much dirtier coal, responsible for 44 per cent of global GHG emissions and much of the air pollution, in China and India in particular.
Kinder Morgan’s proposed marine terminal in Burnaby is competitively hobbled by being able to handle only much smaller oil tankers because of shallow waters under the Second Narrows bridges.
Premier Notley, in her desperation to get a pipeline, any pipeline, built to save her government, UCP leader Jason Kenney in his divisive and unimaginative lust to form the next government, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in his ill-advised bid to ban large oil tankers off B.C.’s north coast with Bill C-48 in the face of First Nations opposition, and everyone else backing the Trans Mountain expansion are backing what is looking more
and more like a losing horse that should never have been in the race to West Coast tide water.
