The organizers of an upcoming town hall on the Kinder Morgan tank farm hope to reach at least 100 students who are unaware of the expansion.
Erin Daly, executive director of Embark, a student-led non-profit organization based out of the university, said many students on campus don’t know what’s going on with the proposed $7.4-billion pipeline.
Part of the Edmonton-to-Burnaby twinning project includes adding 14 new tanks at the Burnaby terminal, bringing the total to 26.
“Not a lot of people know what it is and how it might impact their lives personally, and so the general level of awareness, we felt, needed to increase before any kind of actions could be taken,” she said of the April 3 town hall.
Daly pointed to the Burnaby Mountain protests in November 2014 – protests that left SFU students on the outside looking in due to “really divisive messaging,” she said.
“You were either for Kinder Morgan or against, and so a lot of students expressed feeling disenfranchised or not a part of that conversation because Kinder Morgan is often times an employer for students coming out of health sciences, geography, those kinds of things,” explained Daly.
The two-hour town hall, dubbed TankTalks, is meant to increase the dialogue and provide a comfortable space to express ideas, according to Daly.
The evening will kick off with personal stories from Raaj Chatterjee and Kazlyn Bonnor. Both have been involved with SFU 350, a climate change club.
A panel discussion will follow with Mark LaLonde, SFU’s chief safety officer, Angela Brooks-Wilson, an SFU professor, Grayson Barke, an SFU student, and Charlene Aleck, an elected councillor for the Tsleil-Waututh Nation.
Even though Embark is an opponent of the pipeline, Daly said the town hall is meant to educate attendees and not to sway them in one direction.
TankTalks will take place at the Halpern Centre, room 126 at the Burnaby campus, from 4 to 6 p.m. All students and community members are welcome to attend.
