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Editorial: There's no rush to start drilling
Victoria Times Colonist, January 14, 2005
It's remarkable how an impending election can concentrate the minds of politicians. Both the federal and provincial Liberal administrations have realized there are no votes to be had by pursuing the mirage of offshore resource development on the West Coast. B.C. Energy Minister Richard Neufeld has acknowledged that his party could lose seats in the May election in urban areas where environmental sympathies are strongest. Sources in the national Liberal party have also expressed concern that a push to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling could jeopardize the party's eight seats in Greater Vancouver and Victoria if the minority government is defeated and forced to fight another early election. Ian Jack, communications director for Industry Minister David Emerson, whose Vancouver-Kingsway seat could be jeopardized, says there's no "groundswell of opinion" for lifting the 33-year-old moratorium just now. He's not kidding: Recent public opinion polls have indicated that 69 per cent of B.C. residents oppose offshore development. The federal Priddle panel reported in November that 75 per cent of the submissions it received wanted the moratorium retained. Neufeld has always been gung-ho to lift the ban so that gaps in knowledge -- what resources are off the coast and how their exploitation could endanger coastal species and their habitats -- can be filled as recommended by a Royal Society of Canada panel. The claim in his government's 2003 throne speech that an offshore industry would be "up and running" by 2010, Olympic year, seems laughable today. Now Neufeld, a little chastened, says seismic testing may only be beginning in the Queen Charlotte Basin by then. He denies that there's been any "formal" plan by the national and provincial Liberals to shelve the issue until after the provincial election in four months, or a federal one that could come without warning. But he says no major moves will be made before B.C. voters go to the polls in May. As Tom Gunton, a former deputy minister of Environment in B.C., said in a Times Colonist article last month, nothing can be accomplished until the camps for and against offshore development become less polarized. All those affected -- governments, First Nations, environmentalists, industry -- have to build a common understanding of the facts as a basis for an informed discussion of the pros and cons involved. Most importantly, Gunton argued, gaps in knowledge must be filled, marine areas to be protected identified, potential impacts analysed and ways to improve regulations found, before, not after, the moratorium is lifted -- for the risk of major spills in our ecologically rich shorelines is incontrovertible. So far, the provincial government has shown more interest in offshore resource development than the industry. It would be interesting to know how urgently the industry wants the right to explore and, possibly, extract whatever resources lie offshore and how much it is prepared to pay for that right. We'd also like to know why the Campbell government is so keen to get the drilling rigs working when the feds will likely reap all the benefits. The Supreme Court has declared that the resources off the Atlantic shore belong to Ottawa. Why would we want to endanger our coastline for little or no return?
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