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Posted July 26, 2006
Oil tanker ban not written in stone, or anywhere else
Victoria Times Colonist, July 20, 2006
By Jack Knox
Of course there's a moratorium on oil tankers in B.C.'s inside waters, says David Anderson. It just isn't written down.
And Anderson should know, being both a former federal environment minister and the guy who pushed Pierre Trudeau into implementing the ban 34 years ago.
This comes as federal authorities ponder proposals to run pipelines between Kitimat and northern Alberta. The leading scheme, promoted by Enbridge, envisions twin 1,150 kilometre lines, one sending an oil-thinning fluid called condensate to Alberta, the other carrying tarsands oil to the coast, where it would be loaded onto tankers and shipped to Asia and the U.S. Pembina Pipeline has a separate, $1-billion proposal to pipe condensate from Kitimat to Alberta.
The tanker idea has environmentalists sputtering. It's in direct contravention of the federal moratorium on tanker traffic and oil and gas exploration in B.C.'s inside waters, they say.
Au contraire, replies Transport Canada. No such tanker moratorium exists. All we have is a voluntary exclusion zone, in which crude-carriers from Valdez, Alaska, agree to stay out of Hecate Strait, Queen Charlotte Sound and Dixon Entrance on their way to the continental U.S. The agreement was never meant to cover traffic in and out of Canadian ports, and, in fact, commercial vessels ranging from cruise ships to bulk carriers, fuel barges and coastal freighters plow through those waters all the time without incident. (And don't forget that, off Victoria, oil tankers pass through Juan de Fuca Strait several hundred times a year.)
This is where Anderson steps in. The former Liberal MP scoffs at the contention that no moratorium exists-a convenient interpretation that frees the Conservative government for having to make the politically perilous decision to lift the prohibition. The moratorium may not be chiselled in stone, but its reality as public policy has been accepted by successive Liberal and Progressive Conservative governments since 1972, Anderson argues. "You don't need an order-in-council for government policy."
"The idea that somehow you can pretend it doesn't exist is stretching it a good deal."
Anderson has history here. As the feather-ruffling rookie MP for Esquimalt-Saanich in the early 1970s he crusaded against the Alaska pipeline to Valdez and the shipping of oil down the B.C. coast in tankers. He was instrumental in persuading Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to implement the moratorium in 1972, and in the 1980s served as Premier Bill Vander Zalm's adviser on oil tanker traffic and spills. Last November, as he prepared to bow out as MP for Victoria, the Western Canada Wilderness Committee bestowed the Oil Free Coast Achievement Award upon him.
Anderson does not like the proposal to pipe oil to Kitimat and ship it 166 kilometres down Douglas Channel, right past the spot where Queen of the North sank in March. That disaster happened even though B.C. Ferries' crews know the waters well, unlike the crews of the foreign-flagged tankers that would carry the tarsands crude off to China. Allow those ships to sail, and you can expect two or three Exxon Valdez-type disasters over 30 years, Anderson says.
"The chances of an accident are far higher than with the B.C. Ferries fleet."
The benefits are dwarfed by the major risk to one of the last pristine stretches of coastline in the world, Anderson says. Think of what an oil spill would do to tourism, wildlife, the coastal economy. "I don't think it's worth it." And why are we in such a hurry to send our oil reserves off to China, he asks? This is a non-renewable resource. Oil that sold for $3.25 a barrel in 1972 goes for more than $70 now, and it's not about to get cheaper, or more plentiful. Plenty of people will be happy that Anderson no longer has a vote on this issue. In 2003, the Canadian Alliance called on him to resign as environment minister, calling him the only serious impediment to a safe and successful offshore oil and gas industry, while B.C. Energy Minister Richard Neufeld lumped him in with the "negative Nellies" blocking such development. Anderson even had to fight his own Liberal cabinet colleagues to maintain the moratorium. Enbridge is talking about $4 billion and 5,000 jobs for its project; that's a big boost for northern B.C.
With Anderson on the outside, and no one in government taking his place, you have to think the moratorium isn't worth the paper it's not written on.
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