Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening in adjournment proceedings to pursue a question I asked on June 19, before the House adjourned for the summer recess. I am pleased that the question I raised then allows me to return to an issue of fundamental importance to my constituents.
I hold nine separate town hall meetings twice a year in my riding. At the last series of town halls, as one would expect, the question of the threat of supertankers loaded with bitumen and diluent, the threat of twin pipelines from northern Alberta to Kitimat, and the other project, the one that would expand pipelines to Vancouver for more bitumen diluent coming out of Vancouver harbour, were top of mind for my constituents.
In any case, the question I asked of the Prime Minister on June 19 was whether the Prime Minister would be prepared to force the Enbridge project down our throats if the Province of British Columbia continued to oppose it.
There is a constellation of opposition to the Enbridge project, the risky twinned pipeline from Kitimat to Alberta bringing a toxic fossil fuel condensate called diluent to be stirred into a solid called bitumen to bring it out the other side, and two different sets of tankers, one set bringing diluent and leaving and another collecting diluent mixed with bitumen and leaving offshore. The entire scheme poses unacceptable risks to British Columbia.
When I speak of the constellation of opposition, it really cannot be called a protest. We are talking about the Province of British Columbia itself. Minister of the Environment Mary Polak immediately, on the NEB decision and the cabinet of this country approving the project, said, “No way. Our conditions still are not met”.
However, that is not the only opposition. There is the Union of British Columbia Municipalities, and of course, first nations and the majority of British Columbia residents.
When I asked the question about forcing the project down our throats, I was thinking specifically of the fact that this particular Prime Minister signed a rather famous letter in 2001, generally referred to as the Alberta firewall letter. At the time, the Prime Minister was president of the National Citizens Coalition, and he signed it as the top signatory, immediately followed by Tom Flanagan and others from Alberta.
What they wrote Premier Klein was this:
It is imperative to take the initiative, to build firewalls around Alberta, to limit the extent to which an aggressive and hostile federal government can encroach upon legitimate provincial jurisdiction.
This was the essence of my question. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Natural Resources who answered it at the time evaded this fundamental question of federal-provincial jurisdiction and conflict. What many British Columbians want to ask the Prime Minister and his cabinet is how far they will go to push a project that British Columbians have rejected.
Since the time I asked that question, we have had a substantial development, with the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in the Tsilhqot’in case. I may be the first member of Parliament to speak to that here on the very last day of September, because the decision came down in the summer. What a phenomenal decision. What a clear statement that first nations' title is what it is: it is title. It is not just a matter of consultation. It is actually a matter of first nations having the right to say, “No, we will not allow our land to be destroyed”.
Under the circumstances, when will the current government admit that the Enbridge project it has approved will never be built?