Oil tankers are necessary and are subject to an extensive safety and environmental regime. That’s how federal transport minister Chuck Strahl, in a recent interview with Business in Vancouver, explained his decision to vote against a motion last month aimed at banning oil tanker traffic along B.C.’s north coast.
“Right now, there’s 300 tanker movements in and out of ports a year,” he said.
“If we ban that, it means not only do you put at jeopardy the entire living standards of people associated with tanker movements of all kinds, but frankly, you cannot make many of our ports, airports, First Nations reserves, you name it, rely on tankers to deliver product to their places.”
Strahl also emphasized oil tankers' track record in B.C.
“When I talk to the pilots on the coast, when I talk to the Transportation Safety Board or I talk to the people who are involved in ensuring that there’s clean up equipment ready at any given time to handle any outstanding incident, they all say the purpose of a very extensive safety regime is to make sure we have one of the best systems in the world,” he said. “And it’s proven to be so.”
Strahl also emphasized there’s no moratorium on tanker traffic on the West Coast.
“Sometimes people have confused the moratorium on drilling on the West Coast with oil tanker traffic,” he said.
“They’re two separate things. There is no moratorium on tanker traffic. In fact, there’s probably about 300 tanker traffic movements a year in and out of the ports on the West Coast, and it’s been going on now for close to 30 years and it’s all been without incident because it’s very well-managed and very well-disciplined.”
Strahl said he had no stance on Enbridge’s (TSX:ENB) Northern Gateway project, the $5.5 billion pipeline project to transport crude from Edmonton to Kitimat which catalyzed the recent debate.
“We encourage [Enbridge], as they are [doing], to go through the process that they must in order to see whether or not it can be done safely,” he said.
Since the federal motion passed, Vancouver-Quadra Liberal MP Joyce Murray introduced Bill C-606 to formalize the ban in law.