From Common Sense Canadian contributor Kevin Logan comes this multimedia examination of Premier Christy Clark and the BC Liberal Party's real stand on proposed oil pipelines and tankers in BC. "What they have neglected to tell British Columbians is that their government has entered into binding agreements that ensure the success of pipelines from Alberta to the BC Coast...The June 2010 'Equivalency Agreement', done in secret by the BC Liberals with the Harper Conservative Government, forfeits BC's ability to review, assess and decide on these pipeline proposals which threaten to transform the province as we know it."

Read this story from the Terrace Standard on BC Conservative Party candidate Mike Brousseau's opposition to the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline, running counter to his party's official position. Brousseau's riding encompasses much of the proposed pipeline route and the would-be tanker terminal in Kitimat. (April 24, 2013)

ENBRIDGE shouldn’t be allowed to build its Northern Gateway oil pipeline from Alberta to a planned marine export terminal at Kitimat, says Skeena BC Conservative candidate Mike Brousseau.

“Integrity for me with Gateway just doesn’t add up,” said Brousseau of the $5.5 billion project now in the final stages of a federal environmental review.

Brousseau, who was born in Michigan, still has relatives living in the Kalamazoo area where an Enbridge pipeline broke in 2010.

Company officials weren’t aware of the leak for hours, resulting in significant spillage into the Kalamazoo River.

“There’s been a cover-up,” said Brousseau of work done there to clean up the spill.

“Do you think I want that happening here? No way, Jose.”

Brousseau termed Enbridge a “globalist” company concerned only with profits and not communities or the environment.

“It doesn’t work top down. It needs to work bottom up,” said Brousseau of how decisions should be made and how companies should do business.

“From the top down, people are oppressed. People aren’t represented at a global level.”

And although Brousseau’s position is opposite to that of the BC Conservative party, which is in support of Northern Gateway, that’s fine by him.

“I can go against the party if I wish,” says Brousseau. “He supports me in doing that,” Brousseau added of party leader John Cummins.

“This is not a party like the NDP or the Liberals with a whip system,” Brousseau said of the term used in politics whereby party discipline is enforced.

“I get my advice from the people. I am the people’s candidate.”

Brousseau said his position might change, as long as people also approved, of a pipeline construction plan that included the highest level of environmental protection and monitoring.

Read more: http://www.terracestandard.com/news/203931411.html

Read this story and watch video on questionable tactics undertaken by pipeline builder Enbidge to curry favour with landowners and communities along the route of its proposed Line 9 expansion to eastern Canada. (April 21, 2013)

MONTREAL — The town of Mirabel got $10,000, and put it toward the cost of a generator for its fire department. Belleville, Ont., got $25,000 to turn a city bus into a mobile emergency command centre. And just two weeks ago, Vaudreuil-Dorion got $20,000 for new hazardous material and communications equipment for its fire department.

 

What do these towns have in common?

 

They are all on or near the route of Enbridge’s 9B oil pipeline, and just as the company is seeking approval for its controversial project to reverse and substantially increase the flow of crude oil through the pipeline, it has given these and other towns sizable donations.

 

Made in the name of “safe communities,” the donations are legal, proponents and critics concede.

 

But as the April 19 deadline approached for towns to seek permission to speak before the National Energy Board reviewing the proposal, the question was whether Enbridge expects something in return.

Read story and watch video: http://www.canada.com/news/Enbridge%2Bdonations%2Bflow%2Bmunicipalities%2Balong%2Bpipeline/8274230/story.html

 

The news out of the Joint Review Panel looking into the Enbridge pipeline should have a profound effect on us all. One of the conditions is a requirement that Enbridge carry close to $1 billion in insurance, plus $100 million on hand to cover losses from spills. I find this interesting, since normally an assessment of future damages covered is accompanied by an assessment of the risk to be covered. What is the size of the risk and how big a part of that risk will be taken?...If one uses, as an example, the Enbridge spill into the Kalamazoo River, two years later they had used up all of their insurance of $650 million. The cleanup continues and the cost is expected to be over a billion dollars and much of the damage is forever.

What do ExxonMobil, Enbridge, Suncor, CP Rail and a Michigan Utility have in common? They've all spilled oil within the past week. This latest round of disasters should give Canadian and US lawmakers pause as they contemplate new pipelines.

I’ve got to say it, Premier: you don’t know a damned thing about pipelines and tankers. Do you not understand that the rupture of a pipeline or "accident" with a tanker is mathematically inevitable? That we’re not talking risks but certainties? Your friends in the business community like to call these things “risks” in order to convince people that they’re not likely to happen. Think on this, Premier – if an accident is not going to happen, why make multimillion dollar facilities to clean them up? The theorem is not that something can be an “acceptable risk” but that an “ongoing risk” is a certainty waiting to happen. You simply must understand this, Premier, or you are selling out the Province. As they say, shit happens.

Few places on Earth have been untouched by humans, according to a study in the journal Science. Satellite images taken from hundreds of kilometres above the planet reveal a world that we have irrevocably changed within a remarkably short time. Although industrial projects like the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline or the recently defeated mega-quarry in Ontario typically grab the headlines and bring out public opposition, it’s often the combined impacts of a range of human activities on the same land base that threaten to drive nature beyond critical tipping points. Once those are passed, rapid ecological changes such as species extinction can occur.

Rafe questions BC Premier Christy Clark and her party's economic basis for supporting projects like a new pipeline and refinery proposal for Kitimat, open net pen salmon farms and Site C Dam. "Yes, Mr. Dix must come clean with his program and I intend to ask him questions like these. But you are the premier. You must deal with these issues and do so in specific terms. I assure you that you will hear about these issues again, for many British Columbians, including me, believe our environment and the fauna and flora it creates and protects is worth more than simply a token amount that they consider, and write off, as a cost of doing business - no matter how much that may be.

 

Read this story from CTV.ca on newly obtained documents which reveal that the slashing of the Navigable Waters Protection Act in Stephen Harper's most recent omnibus budget bill was driven by the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association. (Feb. 20, 2013)

OTTAWA -- When the Harper government included a radical overhaul of the Navigable Waters Protection Act in the last omnibus bill, outsiders scratched their heads and wondered out loud where that idea had come from.

Documents obtained through the Access to Information Act show it came, in part, from the pipeline industry.

The Canadian Energy Pipeline Association met with senior government officials in the fall of 2011, urging them not just to streamline environmental assessments, but also to bring in "new regulations under (the) Navigable Waters Protection Act," a CEPA slide presentation shows.

A copy of the Oct. 27 presentation made to then-deputy minister of trade Louis Levesque was obtained by Greenpeace Canada and shared with The Canadian Press.

At the time, the federal government was preparing for a major overhaul of environmental oversight as part of its plan to launch its "Responsible Resource Development" initiative in the 2012 budget.

With so many of the pipeline-related rules in flux, the CETA board of directors decided to hold its fall strategy meeting in Ottawa, and meet with Levesque at the same time.

They had a concise but aggressive wish list, the slides show:

• Regulatory reform so that each project goes through just one environmental review;
• Bolster the Major Projects Management Office (tasked with steering resource projects efficiently through the bureaucracy);
• Speed up permitting for small projects;
• Make government expectations known early in the permitting process;
• Support an "8-1-1" phone line to encourage construction companies to "call before you dig";
• Modify the National Energy Board Act so it can impose administrative penalties, in order to prevent pipeline damage;
• New regulations under the Navigable Waters Protection Act.

The main message was to tell federal decision-makers that if they were serious about "one project, one review," they should look at the entire array of reviews that resource development faces, CEPA president Brenda Kenny explained Wednesday in an interview.

Their plea was for Ottawa to clean up a messy system, strengthen their oversight if need be, but also fix archaic legislation like the Navigable Waters Protection Act, which subjected pipelines to another layer of scrutiny even though pipelines are almost always drilled underneath waterways and don't impact the water.

"If you're serious about sustainable development, it's very helpful to have a clear environmental assessment that is going to address any and all environmental impacts very well, and to then have that inform thoroughly the triple-bottom-line decisions that rely on that input," said Kenny.

In the end, they got almost everything they wanted except the 8-1-1 hotline. Federal regulators ruled that idea out, mainly because the number is already being used by telephone-health services in many provinces.

The first budget omnibus bill in June contained a replacement for the Environmental Assessment Act and also a provision to remove pipelines and power lines from provisions of the Navigable Waters Protection Act. Predictably, reaction from environmentalists was negative, while business and the natural resource sector reacted positively to the changes.

But then the government surprised many close observers by going even further in a second omnibus bill, C-45. The Navigable Waters Protection Act was changed to the Navigation Protection Act, significantly reducing its scope over Canada's waters.

Transport Minister Denis Lebel has argued that the changes were in response to demands from municipalities, who found that the act was tying them up in red tape as they tried to build bridges and culverts, said spokesman Mike Winterburn.

But over the decades, the act -- originally written in 1882 -- had morphed into a central pillar of environmental legislation. Critics say the major changes in C-45 were never discussed in that context.

"I never really knew where this call for change came from," said NDP environment critic Megan Leslie.

At the time, the House of Commons environment committee was reviewing the Environmental Assessment Act, and the need for changes did not come up despite vibrant discussions about how to streamline approvals for resource development, she said.

"It was never in any documents, it was never an addendum to testimony or anything like that. And in some private meetings I've had with some industry reps, they too have expressed to me that they don't know why the Navigable Waters Act changes were made."

While Leslie said it's perfectly acceptable for industry groups to present the government with lists of policy recommendations, "what's not normal is that those changes are accepted holus-bolus, without any consultation."

The changes prompted another outcry late last year from environmentalists, who were then joined by First Nations across the country who took to the streets in protest.

Read this story from The Province on Enbridge's decision to drop its name from the annual Ride to Conquer Cancer in BC, following controversy over its sponsorship. (Feb 14, 2013)

The Enbridge logo is a no-go for the 2013 Ride to Conquer Cancer.

Enbridge, which has received very mixed reviews in B.C. for its proposed Northern Gateway oil pipeline, remains the national title sponsor, but has decided to remove its name from the B.C. ride.

The version of the fundraising ride in oil-rich Alberta remains the Enbridge Ride to Conquer Cancer, while in eco-friendly B.C. the firm’s name has been dropped despite its continued sponsorship.

“It’s a subtle change unless you’re looking for it,” said Doug Nelson, president of the B.C. Cancer Foundation, which uses the money raised by the ride on cancer patient care and research.

“To their credit, Enbridge came forward and said they didn’t want the focus taken away from the riders and the people they are riding for.”

Reports of riders boycotting the event or running into trouble with fundraising surfaced as British Columbians grapple with the proposed oil pipeline, which has run into widespread opposition in B.C.

Nelson said he didn’t personally know of any riders who had dropped out because of the Enbridge sponsorship.

“I’ve read media reports that that was happening, but I don’t know about it myself,” said Nelson. “Last year we grew by 183 riders to 3,011, and fundraising grew by $100,000 to $11.2 million.”

With B.C. headed into a provincial election — Premier Christy Clark has put five B.C. conditions on approval of the pipeline, while B.C. NDP leader Adrian Dix opposes the pipeline — Nelson said the timing was poor for an Enbridge-sponsored ride.

“We didn’t want this to be an election issue,” said Nelson. “There is no political issue for us other than we support funding for cancer research.”

Enbridge spokesman Todd Nogier said his company’s goal is cancer fundraising, and when it appeared that might be hurt, the company dropped its name “by mutual agreement.