Kim Baird, one of the members of the federal ministerial panel touring B.C. this month discovered, to no one’s surprise, that people in Burnaby don’t want the pipeline here.
As she told the Burnaby NOW,“The residents themselves and the numbers (that have) come (to the hearings) just show how concerned they are about the project. That’s different from other areas we’ve seen so far.”
She also said that the panel would advise the government that “in our view, the fact that the terms of reference (for the NEB pipeline review) did not include climate change is something we will bring to the minister’s attention. That process wasn’t designed to deal with that or the other things that people have raised,” Baird said.
And that’s it in a nutshell.
The process wasn’t designed to deal with a lot of very important things that would seem to be, well, just common sense. By noting the process failure the panel has basically drawn a big arrow to a gigantic loophole for the federal government to use. The federal government can now shrug its collective shoulders and say it has no justification for putting the kibosh on the pipeline. After all, you can’t go back and change the process, can you? Well, you can. And you should. But odds are good that the federal government won’t despite promises by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to take a new, more environmentally friendly approach to governing.
This is not reassuring.
Just last month a rupture in the Husky oil pipeline in norther Saskatchewan resulted in a disastrous impact on the area and the North Saskatchewan River, which supplies water to thousands of people in the province.
The leak is estimated at roughly 1,572 barrels of oil and other toxins. And despite recovery efforts officials admit that globs of oil at the bottom of the river will never be cleaned up.
Wildlife was, of course, immediately impacted and the long-term effects will probably never be known.
Now, pipeline proponents will say it was an old pipeline and the new pipelines to Burnaby will be safer. But they also can’t guarantee no accidents either on land or in the inlet. And that’s just not good enough.
We hope this panel bucks up and tells the ministers that the process was flawed, the recommendation was wrong, and this project needs to be stopped in its tracks. But we won’t hold our collective breath.
