Canadian political machinations tied to the ongoing Gulf of Mexico oil spill have washed ashore in B.C.
Federal Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff proposed a ban on oil tanker traffic along B.C.’s north coast Monday and said a Liberal government would formalize an existing moratorium enacted in 1972 by former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
Ignatieff said: “The Harper conservatives refuse to recognize the tanker moratorium off the B.C. coast, and have taken no steps to protect our marine ecosystems.”
Local environmentalists have thrown their support behind the initiative.
Nikki Skuce, senior energy campaigner at ForestEthics said: “The images of oil drenching the shorelines from the BP spill have reminded British Columbians how fortunate we are to have an oil-free coast."
The ban would halt oil tanker traffic through the Dixon Entrance, Hecate Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound, expand a marine protected areas network, create an oil spill contingency plan and stop oil exploration activities in the Arctic.
The legislation would call into question the viability of the Northern Gateway pipeline, a $5.5 billion oil transport project proposed by Enbridge Inc. (TSX:ENB).
The 1,172-kilometre pipeline would move Alberta crude from Edmonton to Kitimat where it would be shipped via tanker to foreign markets.
BIV spoke with local environmental lawyer Josh Paterson about the ban Tuesday morning. He said federal legislation is the best way to protect B.C.’s coastline.
"It stops us from spending years and millions of dollars in governmental processes to look at whether or not these projects are viable,” said Paterson, a staff lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law. “With a law like that we’d be saying right off the bat ‘no.’”
Although he said the provincial Liberals should support Ignatieff’s proposal, ultimately it is up to the federal government to introduce new legislation. When asked if there was a better way to ship Alberta oil to export markets, Paterson said there wasn’t one without an “unacceptably high” risk to the environment.
Alan Roth, Enbridge’s Northern Gateway project spokesman, said the project is under review and the company couldn’t comment on the proposed ban.
He did say Enbridge has undertaken a “tremendous” amount of risk assessment study for the project, which has been independently reviewed by Norway’s DET Norske Veritas.
The assessment found that the probability of a large spill, being 126,000 barrels of oil, is once in 2,800 years.
Roth said: “As much as it’s easy to say no one can guarantee anything, just the way Air Canada can’t guarantee every time you get on an airplane there’s not going to be an accident … those are pretty low probabilities.”
The pipeline would create 165 permanent long-term jobs in B.C.