CBC pretends Trans Mountain’s 69 oil spills never happened

Truth is the first casualty of the pipeline wars

The next time Canada’s public broadcaster publishes a column by Calgary pundit Duane Bratt, it should come with a disclaimer: Warning! Entering fact-free zone!

This week, Bratt penned a passionate defence of the National Energy Board titled “It’s not a sham: A rebuttal to Mayor Robertson’s Trans Mountain stance”. The Mount Royal University professor, who chairs the department of Economics, Justice and Policy Studies, earnestly claimed that in 60 years of operation, the Trans Mountain pipeline had never spilled a drop.

Had Mr. Bratt, or his fact-checkers at the CBC, bothered to look up the “spill history” page on the pipeline company’s own website, they would have found 69 oil spills reported to the federal government since 1961, plus more than a dozen leaks of natural gas, jet fuel, diesel, solvents and contaminated water.

Since Texas-based Kinder Morgan bought the line in 2005, there have been 13 oil spills totalling 5,628 barrels of crude. CBC even reported on some of them, including the 2007 gusher  that coated houses in Burnaby’s Westridge neighbourhood before draining into Burrard Inlet.