We appreciate the chance to respond to the union members’ op-ed on coal exports from Nov. 27, (Critics of coal exports are misinformed) as it provides an opportunity to clear up misunderstandings circulated by the coal lobby. As the members pointed out, they are responsible for mining and transporting B.C.’s metallurgical coal to markets overseas. The key word here is metallurgical. We are opposed to Fraser Surrey Docks’ proposal to export U.S. thermal coal.
The federal government has major gaps to fill to keep its promise to establish a world-class safety system for oil supertankers plying Canadian waters off the coast of British Columbia, an expert panel reports. Ottawa established the panel to recommend safety enhancements as part of its effort to win support from the B.C. government and First Nations for crude oil pipelines and tanker ports that would give the oil industry access to Asian markets. Transport Minister Lisa Raitt and Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver released the report with its 45 recommendations in Vancouver on Tuesday.
The city councils of Surrey and White Rock say they are keenly interested in a relocation inland of the railway line that runs along their ocean shorelines. That message was welcomed by most of the 400-plus people attending a public forum on the topic that the two councils hosted at the Pacific Inn in south Surrey on Nov 26. The forum featured Surrey mayor Dianne Watts and White Rock mayor Wayne Baldwin. Each was given much applause when they declared that it’s time to move the line inland. The case for relocation of the BNSF line has long been compelling.
With two major studies now in hand demonstrating how poorly prepared B.C. is for a marine oil spill, Environment Minister Mary Polak says the government still doesn’t know what it would take to achieve a “world-class” response system. “We have not arrived at a place yet where we can say, ‘Here are the elements of a world-class response,’” Ms. Polak said in an interview Wednesday. Her ministry is reviewing this week’s report from a federal panel that found major gaps in the safety system for oil supertankers plying Canadian waters off the coast.
When commercial logging began in B.C. about 150 years ago, stands of coastal Douglas fir covered 135,000 hectares of land along the Georgia Strait on the mainland coast, on southeast Vancouver Island and on the Gulf Island. Today almost all of that towering forest has been logged. “We are down to the last one per cent,” says Devon Page, an Ecojustice lawyer who thinks we have cut enough Douglas fir, a tree so iconic it appears on the logo of the B.C. Forest Service.
In a November 27 op-ed to the Vancouver Sun, union representatives lumped B.C. metallurgical coal together with U.S. thermal coal and suggested that if you are against one, you are against both. Denial of the FSD coal terminal proposal won’t hurt any existing coal jobs held by union members. None. Metallurgical coal, used to make steel, may have a role in the post carbon economy for the manufacture of new infrastructure. Thermal coal has no role in the future. Why mislead the public into thinking they are one and the same thing?
British Columbians can be forgiven if they feel confused about the environmental effects of the liquefied natural gas industry proposed for northwestern B.C. The provincial government, sticking to a 2020 legislated target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by one third, is pledging that LNG operations in Kitimat would be the cleanest in the world. But an environmental study last week by the SkeenaWild Conservation Trust is warning of a hot mess of pollution and contaminants should three LNG plants be built as planned.
The proposed construction of a new coal terminal at Fraser Surrey Docks is drawing the ire of environmental group Greenpeace. That’s not surprising. What is unexpected is the angle from which Greenpeace is taking aim at the Port Metro Vancouver facility. It is not using the increase on global carbon emissions and health consequences as its main argument that the terminal should not go ahead. Rather, it is on the grounds for which the terminal was proposed in the first place: economics.
An estimated 3,000 to 4,000 people rallied in Vancouver on November 16 in opposition to the Northern Gateway tar sands pipeline. It was a strong expression of the ‘wall of opposition’ that the Alberta, BC and federal governments are facing as they try to push through acceptance of the project, including gaining formal approval of the National Energy Board.
By the time cabinet minister Bill Bennett stepped into the legislature press theatre Tuesday to announce the pending doom of the Pacific Carbon Trust, the agency was pretty much orphaned in terms of support. School districts had denounced it. The auditor general had exposed it. Media coverage - for instance Gordon Hoekstra's stories in The Vancouver Sun 19 months ago - had thoroughly discredited it. Jordan Bateman of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation was on the cost-cutter equivalent of a mission from God to get rid of it.
