Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently said “if I thought there was a danger to the beautiful British Columbia coast, I would not have approved the Kinder Morgan pipeline.”
The thing is, I live on this coast, and the community members, Indigenous leaders, and even politicians that surround me don’t share Trudeau’s level of certainty. In fact, we’ve seen many scientific reports indicating that Kinder Morgan would be devastating for the Pacific.
We’ve heard lots of good reasons to fix or end NAFTA, but the most important one has been ignored. It’s the energy proportionality clause, a rule like no other in the world. Under it, Canada must make available for export to the US three-quarters of its oil production and over half its natural gas. If left in place in NAFTA 2.0, the rule can single-handedly prevent Canada from achieving its Paris climate promises.
First Nations communities and their supporters are planning to ratchet up on-the-ground resistance to Kinder Morgan Inc.'s planned expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline with a call for a mass demonstration on Burnaby Mountain in March.
Members of the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation – which is challenging the federal approval in court – is launching a campaign of volunteer recruitment and training Tuesday through a network of allied Indigenous communities and environmental groups.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is confident that his approval of Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain expansion will withstand legal challenges from First Nations who say they were not adequately consulted on it.
The federal government "went through all the right steps" before giving the green light to the hotly-contested pipeline project, he told National Observer in an exclusive interview on Tuesday afternoon.
Premier Rachel Notley is signalling that her government plans to accelerate its online warfare in support of a controversial pipeline project.
Speaking to reporters on Monday, Notley explained that this would drive home Alberta's message in the “ongoing dispute that British Columbia has triggered with Alberta and with all Canadians.”
Federal government officials spent two days denying the findings of a scientific paper exploring research into the effects of oilsands pollution in the ocean, a week before the Trudeau Liberals gave the green light to the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion to the west coast.
Pipeline giant Kinder Morgan Inc. is mustering its legal team to combat the B.C. government's bid to block new oil shipments off the coast, saying investors are losing patience with delays to its $7.4-billion Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project.
Liberals say they will also announce new protections for oceans, lakes and rivers
Feb 08, 2018
The federal Liberal government says it will streamline the approval process for major natural resources projects, scrapping the National Energy Board and empowering a new body to conduct more extensive consultation with groups affected by development.
The changes are part of the largest overhaul of Canada's environmental assessment process in a generation.
Lost in the heated arguments over Kinder Morgan's proposed Trans Mountain pipeline is this simple fact: more than a quarter of the bitumen flowing through it will end up as pollution spilling into our oceans — one way or the other.
All the bitumen that doesn't spill from pipelines or tankers gets burned, ending up as carbon pollution dumped into our environment. Over one quarter ends up in the oceans, acidifying them for millennia to come.
