Thank you very much for the invitation to present to the committee.
On behalf of Mayor Lisa Helps and the council for the City of Victoria, I provide the following remarks as acting mayor of Victoria.
Victoria is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. The shipping lanes of tankers carrying petroleum products from the Trans Mountain pipeline and other fossil fuel ports in the Pacific northwest pass offshore within several kilometres of our community. Victoria is also the capital city of British Columbia and the urban centre of the Capital Regional District, which is comprised of nine first nations, 13 municipalities, three unincorporated areas, and approximately 380,000 people.
The capital region includes more than 1,500 kilometres of marine shoreline in the area known as the Salish Sea, adjacent to southern Vancouver Island. This includes the Juan de Fuca Strait, which connects the Pacific Ocean to Burrard Inlet, and other inland waters. It includes the shoreline frontage of the 13 municipalities of greater Victoria around Sooke Harbour, Esquimalt Harbour, Victoria Harbour, the Saanich Peninsula, and the Saanich Inlet. It includes several hundred islands and surrounding waters in the area known as the southern Gulf Islands.
These coastal waters are vital to the economic and social well-being of our region: tens of thousands of jobs in tourism and related sectors, the property values of more than 100,000 residents and property owners who have made investment decisions in relation to their proximity to a healthy marine and shoreline environment, and also the health and wellness of all residents of the region, including their recreational options and their quality of life.
In addition, the coastal waters of the city of Victoria and the capital region are of vital importance from the standpoint of biological diversity. They provide vital and fragile habitat for species, including the southern resident killer whale population, an endangered species that has now been reduced to 75 surviving animals on the southern coast of British Columbia, concentrated in the tanker shipping route surrounding the capital region.
Risks associated with the shipment of bitumen include substantial emergency response and spill cleanup costs imposed on local government through inadequate federal safeguards, and the delegation of responsibility to a third party entity controlled by the petroleum exporters.
One final factor I wish to note is the impact of fossil fuel exports and tanker shipping from the standpoint of climate change, which Canada has recognized as a signatory to the Paris agreement. The consequences of climate change are already being felt around the globe and within Canada's borders, including within the capital region, in terms of volatile weather patterns, extreme storm surges resulting in flooding, and rising sea levels that impact property values, as well as public and private infrastructure.
Even if everything functions according to plan with the petroleum product being transported from its source to the end consumer with no loss into interior coastal waterways, there is still an unavoidable negative impact from the standpoint of climate change. The fuel is burnt by the consumer, and it is spilled into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming and threatening the ability of humans to survive on this planet.
For these reasons and others, the City of Victoria and the Capital Regional District have adopted a position of opposition to infrastructure or policies that will result in an increase of fossil fuels transport through the fragile coastal waters of the Salish Sea. I, therefore, wish to reiterate the mayor of Burnaby's request that consideration be given to extending the application of this legislation to the shipment of crude petroleum products in the southern coastal waters of British Columbia, including the Salish Sea and the Juan de Fuca Strait.
Thank you.