Federal NDP must disagree with Rachel Notley on Energy East to beat Stephen Harper, Quebec activist says

Opposition movements against four megaprojects linked to the Alberta oil sands are increasingly connected, according to Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, an author, environmental activist, and former leader of the 2012 student strike in Quebec.

In British Columbia, attention is focused on the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, proposed to carry heavy crude from the Alberta oil sands to Kitimat, and the twinning of the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, which runs from Edmonton to Burnaby. A major political controversy south of the border is the Keystone XL pipeline, which U.S. President Barack Obama has stood against. And in eastern Canada, there is TransCanada’s Energy East project, proposed to connect and expand on existing pipelines to see tar-sands crude carried from Alberta all the way to Saint John, New Brunswick.

“People in Quebec are asking themselves a question,” Nadeau-Dubois said on the phone from Montreal. “That question is, do we want to become a highway for the export of one of the dirtier forms of oil in the world? More and more, Quebecers are saying, ‘No, we don’t want to become that export platform for the tar sands.'”

Nadeau-Dubois, who is scheduled to speak at a public forum at SFU Harbour Centre on Friday (May 8), told the Straight he plans on giving B.C.’s anti-pipeline movement an update on similar activities gaining momentum in the country’s east.

“We are really beginning to be able to have a global debate about greenhouse-gas emissions and the tar sands in particular,” he said.