Dear Editor
I am a Burnaby Mountain resident, and am following government action, or lack of it, as presented by media.
Much of your Friday, Feb. 18 issue was devoted to news on the topic, and I am amazed at the contrasting reports of MLAs Herbert, Shin and Corrigan vis-à-vis that of MLA Richard Lee presented in the legislature. Where the first three demanded that the government take action and press Kinder Morgan to provide answers to their concerns, which are circumvented by the NEB’s review process because the provincial government has surrendered control of the review process to the Federal government, Mr. Lee continued to reassure us that ‘the government’, as one of the interveners, will stand by its five conditions for approval. Those ‘five conditions’ are powerless against a federal government appointed NEB board, who support Texas-based Kinder Morgan’s ambitions, and who are controlling what issues are allowed to be raised. In other words, Mr. Lee had really nothing new to report or to add to the discussion.
While the Liberal government prepares to wait and let our fate be determined by Kinder Morgan, the NDP MLAs debated a motion to take action by calling on the government to withdraw from the NEB review process and replace it by establishing its own environmental assessment process so that their intervener questions can be answered.
In other words – create a process whereby those questions of great concern to B.C. residents and the environment will get a hearing at these Kinder Morgan talks.
To quote MLA Spencer Chandra Herbert as reported in the Burnaby Now, “It’s well past time, indeed, for us to finally assert our right as a province, assert our power as a province, and get the answers that we deserve for a project like Kinder Morgan is proposing.”
Dolores E. Myles, Burnaby
