LandKeepers News Archive
NDP Voices Opposition Against Pipeline Project
March 24 2010 | News Articles | Kitimat Northern Sentinel
By Marcel Vander Wier – Kitimat Northern Sentinel
Opposition to a proposed pipeline project, linking the port of Kitimat to the Alberta oilsands, is growing.
On the 21st anniversary of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, the federal New Democratic Party commemorated the environmental disaster by introducing a bill seeking to outlaw all oil tankers in the Dixon Entrance, Hecate Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound.
NDP fisheries and oceans critic Fin Donnelly, MP for New Westminster-Coquitlam and Port Moody, announced the introduction of a bill in Ottawa today.
“My bill would make the moratorium on oil tanker traffic in this region legally binding,” said Donnelly. “The moratorium on oil tanker traffic has been in place for over 35 years – it was necessary to protect our coastline then.”
“It’s still necessary now.”
Yesterday, First Nations groups and community activists from all over British Columbia came together to denounce the proposed Enbridge Pipeline which would bring 225 oil tankers a year through the Hecate Strait and the Queen Charlotte Sound to move oil to markets in Asia and the USA.
“People from across northern British Columbia are becoming united against this pipeline and the oil tanker traffic it will create,” said NDP natural resources critic Nathan Cullen, MP for the northern BC riding of Skeena-Bulkley Valley.
“The decisions are being made in Ottawa, but the First Nations and the local grassroots are saying that their future isn’t in the temporary jobs this would create. They are looking for real investments in new green energy.”
Reports state that the Enbridge project could create more than 4,000 construction jobs, plus thousands more indirect jobs to support construction and operations.
But Cullen called the jobs versus risks debate a moot argument.
“This pitting of the economy versus the environment … I again will say is a false one,” he said. “There are jobs out there to be created and I know Kitimat is in pursuit of those, without putting our environment at risk.”
“The actual number of permanent jobs created by this project would be the equivalent of opening up a medium-sized Canadian Tire,” Cullen told reporters in a media conference today. “The risks involved with this project to the economy of Kitimat, the environment and the economy of the entire northwest are significant.”
The party’s environmental critic Linda Duncan, representative for Edmonton-Strathcona, added that one need only consider the federal government’s record in preventing and responding to spills to understand the opposition to this project. “I experienced firsthand the devastation of the bunker C spill at Lake Wabamun and the failure by federal departments to respond including to address impacts to First Nation lands,” said Duncan.
“The concerns raised about risks posed by this project are well founded.”
For complete analysis, read the March 31 edition of the Northern Sentinel.
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