About 50 people protested outside NDP MLA Scott Fraser’s office today to raise awareness of the growing opposition to the proposed Enbridge pipeline project. The protest was one of about 60 similar events taking part at MLA offices across British Columbia. Reports were that Premier Christy Clark was visited upon by about 200 people.
The Enbridge proposal will see crude oil delivered over land by pipeline from the Alberta oil sands to Kitimat in northern British Columbia. The oil will then be loaded onto supertankers for export to such places as China.
A major rally at British Columbia’s legislative building took place on Monday, Oct. 22, which attracted about 4,000 concerned people, led by the First Nations communities that will be affected by the pipeline proposal should it go forward. The Yinke Dene has been staunchly opposed to the proposal, as have the Coastal Nations Alliance, and those who are signatories of the Fraser River Declaration.
See our story: http://www.hashilthsa.com/news/2012-10-24/pipeline-and-tanker-proposals-face-historic-three-days-protest-across-bc
MLA Fraser was among the protesters on Monday in Victoria and joined the protest outside his own office today in Port Alberni. The Opposition NDP has taken the position not to support the Enbridge proposal. Fraser said the risk for environmental devastation to the coast and the interior of BC in the event of a spill was just too great.
And Fraser has some specific experience around this industry. He was an oil refiner for Shell and drilled for oil in the Arctic in his time before politics. He said there is no way to clean up an oil spill if it were to happen.
Carolyn Fred of Ditidaht took part in the noon-hour protest on Johnson St. She told Ha-Shilth-Sa she came out to the event after thinking about the children’s and grandchildren’s future.
“Greed has got us nowhere,” she said, adding that the coast is a precious resource that needs protecting.
Andrea Amos Stoney attended as well, saying she wanted to throw her support behind those working to stop the oil tankers that will carry oil along the inside coast of Vancouver Island. She said the proposal doesn’t make much sense, given that the benefits will flow out of province, and out of the country.
It will take just one wrong turn for a marine disaster to occur, and it will be just a matter of time for that to happen, she has concluded after doing research on the project she told Ha-Shilth-Sa.
“It’s too much to risk. No one is thinking about the generations to come. She said Enbridge is risking “our beautiful coast and all of its life” just to make money.
After inviting protesters into his office for coffee and cookies, Fraser addressed the crowd and said the moratorium on supertanker traffic along the coast remains in place. He said it was a motion that went to the legislature from Tofino and was passed unanimously back in the day. There has been no legislation that would overturn that moratorium so it remains on the books.
Fraser also said that the former Campbell Liberal government had signed away environmental protections for BC to the Harper federal Conservatives, so BC does not have a mechanism for an environmental review of the pipeline proposal. The Harper government, subsequently gutted the federal environmental protections with its omnibus budget bill, passed earlier this year in the House of Commons.
Fraser promised that if the NDP were elected, the party would withdraw from the Campbell agreement with the feds.
During a recent meeting of municipalities held in Tofino, Fraser said delegates learned that there are just 13 people trained in the province to respond to oil spills. Fraser asked what the response time would be if there was a tanker spill in the north (he used the Hecate Strait as an example) and the response, he was told, would be 72 hours from when the spill was detected, but there were no details given as to what that response would entail.
Fraser made it clear to the protesters at his office that there is no way to clean up a spill. He said Exxon Valdez remains a disaster. Enbridge’s 2010 spill in the Kalamazoo River in the United States will remain a disaster.
Fraser said “we have to get off the fossil fuel treadmill.” He said extraction has been fast-tracked by government, and it is being shipped away as though there were no future generations.
