At the end of September, local government elected representatives from all over British Columbia listened to their constituents.
It’s a solid fact that a substantial majority of British Columbians oppose oil tankers on our coast (see recent polling). And on September 27, a majority of municipal councillors and mayors assembled at the Union of BC Municipalities (UBCM), annual convention and adopted a resolution, proposed by the District of Saanich, to call on the provincial government and the official opposition “to use whatever legislative and administrative means that are available to stop the expansion of oil tanker traffic through BC’s coastal waters.”
West Coast lawyers Brenda Belak and Josh Paterson were at UBCM’s convention in Victoria to talk with local officials about the resolution. We worked closely in collaboration with a tireless and fantastic team from the Dogwood Initiative, Georgia Strait Alliance, Organizing for Change, Pembina Institute, Sierra Club BC, CPAWS, and adspace outside the conference centre was festooned by ForestEthics Advocacy with ads thanking municipalities for standing up for a clean coast. It was great to have had many informed and respectful discussions with elected representatives on both sides of the issue.
Clearly the effort was worth it. The resolution passed by a tight margin of 51% to 49%. This is not at all a discouraging result – this was a very strongly-worded resolution asking for a stop to any expansion of oil tanker traffic, whether on account of Enbridge, Kinder Morgan, or other projects in future. The level of support for the resolution mirrors almost perfectly the level of opposition to Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion in province-wide polling (opposition to Enbridge Northern Gateway stands at 60 percent in the same poll). Many people in BC have yet to learn much about the grave risks that are posed to rivers, coastlines and communities by Kinder Morgan’s proposed expansion of the Trans Mountain oil pipeline and oil tankers project – an existing pipeline that currently terminates at Burnaby – where the company has had two notable oil spills in recent years.
What we have found over years of working on pipeline and tanker issues in BC is that the more that people learn about these projects, the more likely they are to oppose them. Oil tankers and pipelines pose catastrophic risks and as people learn more about those risks, they tend to conclude that they aren’t willing to open their families and their communities up to the chance of oil spills. As more and more people learn about Kinder Morgan’s plans to transform Vancouver and the Salish Sea into a massive oilport, we have good reason to believe that they won’t like what they hear. The same goes for elected officials.
This resolution has no legal effect, but it has a great deal of political importance. It represents a majority of local governments joining with the overwhelming majority of First Nations in opposing these dangerous projects. BC’s local governments have sent an important message to the federal and provincial governments that British Columbians expect them to act decisively to protect the coast from oil spills by refusing approval for oil tanker and pipeline projects. In this case, the request for action was directed at the provincial government, which has powers that it can use to help put a stop to these threats.
Protecting BC from oil spills does not mean BC will always say no to everything, or that BC is closed for business. There are many opportunities to develop sustainable jobs that respect the environment on which we all rely.
But it does mean saying no, and strongly so, to this particular kind of industrial development – oil pipelines and tankers – that puts so much at risk for our environment and communities. As we try to move our society towards a transition away from fossil fuels and to reduce the catastrophic impacts of climate change, massive oil pipelines and tankers which take us in precisely the wrong direction, should have no place in BC’s future. We are glad that so many local government elected representatives have voiced this loudly.
Photo courtesy of the Dogwood Initiative. The Mayors/Councillors depicted are, from left to right, Saanich councillor Dean Murdock, Smithers mayor Taylor Bachrach, Prince Rupert councillor Jennifer Rice and Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson.