Premier Clark reminds me of the story where a man asks a lady if she will go to bed with him for $100,000 and she hems and haws, speaks of her needy children and, with apparent reluctance agrees. The man then asks, “Will you then go to bed with me for $100?” The lady is outraged and asks, “What do you think I am, a common prostitute?” The man replies, “We’ve already established that, ma’am…Now we’re dickering over the price.” Premier Clark has declared British Columbia to be a common prostitute and is now ready to dicker.

I would be delighted to report that Premier Clark’s recent musings about the proposed Enbridge pipeline were a positive step but unfortunately must report that she misses the point – badly. Her position evidently is that BC is not benefiting sufficiently from the pipeline. Enbridge itself admits that it will have leaks in the same way an airplane company will have crashes. This is the critical point, for to say we’re not getting enough money from Enbridge says that we’re OK with a spill here and there as long as we’re adequately compensated...What Premier Clark is doing is looking for a price for our wilderness and I say that this is irrelevant – no price is enough.

A 3 min video from Pacific Wild and Damien Gillis, featuring NHL Hall of Fame goaltender Mike Richter sharing his once-in-a-lifetime experience in Canada's Great Bear Rainforest - threatened by the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline and supertankers.

We have a jurisdictional clash here, for under The Constitution Act, federal power over fisheries is paramount but the Provinces have control over “Property and Civil Rights”. There’s no question in my mind that the Province can and should legislate so as to protect all wildlife, which is its clear right. Hunting laws are provincial as are fishing laws over those which do not go to sea. The dangerous ground is that if the “pith and substance” of your laws was to deal in fisheries over which Ottawa has jurisdiction it might be struck down by the courts. There is absolutely no need to be concerned about that if you proceed properly. Dealing with the pipeline, there is an unquestionable provincial right to protect all fauna and flora.

Read this story in TheTyee.ca by Andrew Nikiforuk on the big pay raises Enbridge executives received following the most costly pipeline spill in North American history. (July 12, 2012)

Just months after Enbridge caused the costliest onshore pipeline spill in U.S. history, the board of directors for Calgary-based Enbridge rewarded senior executives with pay raises in 2010.

 

According to Enbridge's 2011 "management information circular" the company's 12 directors voted to raise their own annual retainers by $30,000 and increased compensation for CEO and president Patrick Daniel from $6 million to $8.1 million in 2010.

 

Stephen J. Wouri, president of liquid pipelines, also saw his income increase from $1.9 million to $2.7 million in 2010. In fact all executives received substantial raises.

 

Earlier in 2010, on July 25, an Enbridge pipeline carrying diluted bitumen ruptured, pouring the toxic mixture for 17 hours into the Kalamazoo River near Marshall township in Michigan. The two-year clean-up has cost $800 million.

 

"The Marshall incident was factored into the 2010 short-term incentive awards for all of the named executives," said the circular.

 

A year after the disaster the Enbridge board again upped compensation for five senior executives under a short term incentive program that increased their pay by "$4,571,730 including $2,396,000 to the president and chief executive officer." The company says that it has a "pay for performance philosophy."

 

 

'Failure' by Enbridge management cited by US investigators

 

An investigation of the July 2010 spill released Tuesday by the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found that corporate neglect fueled by a "culture of deviance" on safety issues at Enbridge caused an "organizational accident" that was preventable.

 

The NTSB, an independent federal agency that studies the causes of accidents, said that weak and underfunded pipeline regulators played a role in the spill too.

The company's response to the pipeline rupture from the control room to spill containment was so chaotic and unfocused that the NTSB chair Deborah Hersman compared Enbridge's negligence to the bungling of the Keystone Cops.

Read more: http://thetyee.ca/News/2012/07/12/Enbridge-Executives-Pay-Raise/

The increased tanker traffic from the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline to Kitimat, Kinder Morgan's planned expansion of the Trans Mountain line to Burnaby, and a proposal to ship jet fuel up the Fraser River, would bring with it intensified ship noise, increased risks of spills and more ship strikes. The Enbridge Project alone would add 200 ships per year to the coast. The Vancouver Airport’s proposed port for supertankers at the south arm of the Fraser River, and Kinder Morgan’s proposal would increase the size and frequency of ships in the southern coast region.

I believe that Enbridge is in trouble on this one and, amongst other things, have risked and lost several millions on their truly laughable ad campaign. But the unhappy news is that this report on Enbridge, far from lessening the Tar Sands threat to BC, has enhanced it. There will be a new pipeline consortium put in place and the companies and their government accomplices will say, “See, we listened to your concerns and have commissioned Leakabit Pipelines from Saudi Arabia, who have assured us that they are 99% certain, or at any rate pretty sure, that there will never be a spill in BC."

Read this column from Vaughan Palmer in The Vancouver Sun on Enbridge's sinking chances at building its proposed Northern Gateway pipelines following a damning report from US regulators on its 2010 spill into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan. (July 11, 2012)

Opposition leader Adrian Dix was quick to make political hay Tuesday out of a U.S. regulator's finding that Enbridge officials responded like the "Keystone Kops" to a spill from one of their oil pipelines.

What happened south of the border could happen here, suggested Dix, a sworn opponent of the company's proposal to construct a 1,000-kilometre pipeline across northern B.C.

Underscoring the point, he started his news conference by reading a telling passage from that day's findings by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board on Enbridge's handling of a July 2010 spill into Michigan's Kalamazoo River:

The fracture of the pipeline along a flaw identified five years earlier and duly ignored. The company's 17-hour failure to respond to alarms, all the while pumping oil through the two-metre-wide rift and into the waterway.

The fact that it took workers from another company to make Enbridge aware of the spill and finally set in motion the necessary procedures to shut off the flow.

"Learning about Enbridge's poor handling of the rupture," read Dix, quoting safety board chair Debbie Hersman, "you can't help but think of the Key-stone Kops."

Keystone Kops is presumably a cute shot by the U.S. regulator at the proposed (and very controversial) Keystone pipeline, which would transport Canadian oil to American refineries.

But Dix had no difficulty turning the riff to his own purposes, as he waded into the B.C. Liberals and Premier Christy Clark over what he perceives as their dereliction of duty on the proposed Northern Gateway project.

Clark's failure to say where she stands on an oil pipeline that, in her own characterization, offers B.C. much risk and limited benefits. Plus her government's failure to submit any evidence of those presumed risks before the filing deadline for the current National Energy Board hearings on the project.

The B.C. Liberals and their leader have gone "absent with-out leave" on the Enbridge file, declared Dix, in the most quotable line from the midday press conference at the Opposition offices in downtown Vancouver.

As he spoke, reporters were still digesting the findings of the latest poll of public opinion, an Angus Reid survey that provided cause for good cheer among New Democrats and nothing to hearten Clark and the Liberals.

Yes, the numbers can change. But it is increasingly hard to imagine a scenario that will reverse Clark's personal disapproval rating (64 per cent), her dismal standing with women voters (they prefer Dix by a margin of three to one), and the responses from more than half of those surveyed that their opinion of her has "worsened" in the past three months.

Read this statement on Canada Newswire regarding the signing of the "Save the Fraser" Declaration this past weekend by the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, joining the list of over 100 First Nations in BC who officially oppose pipelines and oil tankers. The signing officially links indigenous opposition to both major pipeline proposals through BC - the Enbridge pipelines to Kitimat and the Kinder Morgan pipeline to Vancouver, whose terminus is located amid the Tsleil-Waututh's traditional territory in Burrard Inlet. (July 7, 2012)

NORTH VANCOUVER, July 7, 2012 /CNW/ - Today the Tsleil-Waututh Nation celebrated its connection to the waters of Burrard Inlet and honoured the work of the Yinka Dene Alliance during a ceremony at its traditional village of Whey-Ah-Wichen. Following the ceremony, Tsleil-Waututh Nation added its name to the Alliance's Save the Fraser Declaration.

The Save the Fraser Declaration is an Indigenous law ban on tar sands pipelines through First Nations traditional territories. It also bans tar sands oil tankers in the ocean migration routes of Fraser River salmon on the north and south coasts of British Columbia. To date, the Declaration has been signed by more than 100 First Nations, forming an unbroken chain from the U.S. border to the Arctic Ocean.

"Tsleil-Waututh stands together with First Nations and all British Columbians who do not support pipeline expansion and increased tanker traffic," says Chief Justin George, Tsleil-Waututh Nation. "As People of the Inlet, it is our birthright and obligation to care for the lands and waters of our territory. Pipeline expansion is a risk too great to accept."

"We welcome Tsleil-Waututh's signing of the Declaration. First Nations across B.C. are saying absolutely no oil pipelines or tankers in our territories," said Chief Jackie Thomas of Saik'uz First Nation, a member of the Yinka Dene Alliance. "We have banned oil pipelines and tankers using our laws, and we will defend our decision using all the means at our disposal."

Tsleil-Waututh Nation has publicly opposed Kinder Morgan's proposed expansion of the Trans Mountain Pipeline, the terminus of which is on Tsleil-Waututh territory on the south shore of Burrard Inlet in Burnaby. The expansion would more than double current pipeline capacity¹, potentially resulting in an oil tanker per day entering Burrard Inlet.

Kinder Morgan recently filed a commercial tolling application with the National Energy Board. The application relates to the approval of the contract terms and toll structure that would be implemented on the proposed Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. Tsleil-Waututh Nation will act as an intervenor in the application process.

Tsleil-Waututh Nation experienced first-hand the impacts of a Kinder Morgan oil spill when, in 2007, a spill at the company's Westridge Terminal discharged approximately 234,000 litres of oil² into Burrard Inlet and the surrounding environment. Another oil spill has the potential to destroy the marine environment that has sustained Tsleil-Waututh people for thousands of years. Already much of the marine life in the Inlet is not harvestable due to pollution in the water.

Read more: http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/1004719/tsleil-waututh-nation-signs-save-the-fraser-declaration

The argument we hear most frequently from the Harper Government in favour of bulldozing through the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipelines is the major job benefits the project would carry for Canadians. But recent talk of importing foreign workers from the United States and China make a mockery of that boast. The latest evidence to this effect comes via a job posting on the American website run by Veterans of Foreign Wars, which helps vets find employment, claiming that Canada is moving ahead with major pipeline projects and that this organization "has secured an exclusive employment initiative with Alberta, Canada" - to provide thousands of American workers to build pipelines and work in the oil and gas industry.